Rome II

[Gusington]

Yeah ~22.8MB, mine just went through.

EDIT: skullduggery abounds! An 'anonymous developer' has posted over at the official CA forums and he is not pleased:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthread.php/81021-Review-from-an-Anonymous-Developer-CA-response?

[mikeck]

 I'm so sick of these people. I mean seriously, absent a crash that makes the game unplayable,  the game is not that bad. Now many won't enjoy it as much as I do, but it's still not bad. People are acting like its SOtS 2 released with half the game missing. This is the first game ever that wasn't optimized well?(PON was one recently). This is the first game that had bugs! Seriously, what is so damned horrible that people feel the need to post 100 times about how bad the game is.

Look at Bboyer: he doesn't like the game...just didnt dig it. Fine, he hops on, gives his thoughts, has a few discussions, and he's off to try another game. He doesn't start 18 threads taking polls about "what sucks most", "what's you favorite bug" or "why CA sucks".

It's a $50 game you know...I can't believe it's the first time these people have spent $50 on something that they didnt think was worth it. It's not a perfect game but its quite good and pretty much what I expected. Red skies and all

Rant over

[undercovergeek]

lol - i repeat, do not go to the total war forums!

[Bison]

I am slowly extending the Roman Empire and am have a blast doing it.  I do understand some of the issues; strategic map lag, AI aggressiveness, turn processing times. 

I need to see if todays patch fixed the red skies.

[Skoop]

^ Well said mikeck, I was expecting a little bit better, but I'm still having fun with it.  The AI might be worse than Shogun 2 because the map is so much bigger with an insane amount of factions to deal with.  Almost done with my Athens campaign, then I will shelf it for a while until some great mods come out.  Already have 30 hours spent playing it, so I got my money's worth.  The Mods for this game that will be out a year from now will make it a classic at some point.

[Bison]

lol - i repeat, do not go to the total war forums!

Ha.  I run away from the general discussions at that joint.  Eventually I'll head over to pursue the available mods in a few months.

[undercovergeek]

lol - i repeat, do not go to the total war forums!

Ha.  I run away from the general discussions at that joint.  Eventually I'll head over to pursue the available mods in a few months.

yeah, i only went for the mods but you kind of get sucked in and cant get out, once you start reading the hyperbole and drama it gets hypnotic

TBH its refreshing to be able to come here and have reasoned debate about it or even some downright fanboy yahooing about it, because over there, i love the game but the more you read the more you wonder what people see that i dont

[mikeck]

Geek, your not missing anything. Lots of those people are running rigs with all sorts of over-clocked gadgets and super modified widgets for their super alien ware 5000. Then they complain because CA didnt optimize the game for their system or they have a crash. Now, the are some bugs and I had a freeze up last night during a battle but its a good game. Only reason I went over was to pick up the "close combat" mod that reduces the kill rate and unit speed

[besilarius]

Now, it's not the same thing, and I don't want to preach about this, but this constant attacks seem so childish.
Most will not remember that in the pre computer gaming universe, there were problems.  Before SPI came up, Avalon Hill produced one - ONE - wargame a year.  Many of them were really quite poor.  Afrika Korps could be reduced to a 2 to 1 attack on Tobruk on about turn five.  If the Germans won the attack, they would blitz on and win the game.  If they lost, all their panzers were gone, and the brits won.
People didn't complain that much because it was the only game of that year.
Today, people seem to be utterly spoiled by too much bounty.   And don't talk about $50.  AK cost $6 in 1963.  Allowing for inflation, that is closer to $60.  And was mostly paid for by mowing lawns for twenty-five cents.  That's a lot of lawns for what turned out to be a turkey.
The whole spectacle speaks very poorly to common courtesy and ethics, and too much about feeling spoiled and entitled.

[MengJiao]

lol - i repeat, do not go to the total war forums!

  Once I was naive and I thought there was some rhyme or reason to being nasty about problems with games.  Now I think it's just a cultural thing
that I cannot understand like the Argentine Sad-guy-sings-along Tango or something.

   The hyped up negativity about Rome II -- I don't get it.  I get why CLOD was such a scandal, but the criticism of Rome II seems kind of far-fetched.

[Dolan50]

Board games and PC games are much different.
With a boardgame sometimes a few simple house rules would suffice and you have a patched playable game.

PC games are a totally different matter.
Simple house rules aren't enough sometimes to fix the inherent flaws of a game,and some of these games can actually ruin your PC and cause you endless hours of frustration trying to patch them or upgrade your PC to try and play them and then find out the problem still can't be fixed.
I think that is what really riles some people.

I think we may all be guilty to some extent in wanting games about subjects we are interested in to meet all of our expectations and feel let down when they can't live up to them and then feel cheated  because of all the time and effort you put into them when maybe you should have been wasting that time on something more meaningful.

[Grim.Reaper]

I think we also always have to remember that people posting on any forum typically represents a very small minority of actual players of the game.  Mostly people that post claim to have issues, which leaves the vast majority of the people not posting happily enjoying the game.  And if the developer's claims are true, there are hundreds of thousands of Rome players so these people complaining are tiny in the end.  They just tend to have very loud mouths making them seem larger in numbers:)

[Gusington]

Great  posts on the last page. 'Geek I feel exactly like you do sometimes...I feel like an ignoramus because I am enjoying Rome II.

[CptHowdy]

I think we also always have to remember that people posting on any forum typically represents a very small minority of actual players of the game.  Mostly people that post claim to have issues, which leaves the vast majority of the people not posting happily enjoying the game.  And if the developer's claims are true, there are hundreds of thousands of Rome players so these people complaining are tiny in the end.  They just tend to have very loud mouths making them seem larger in numbers:)

wouldn't go that far. I have had issues with games and went to the forums only to see that plenty of people have the same issue I am experiencing. I just don't feel the need to add another post to the thread. so people not posting doesn't mean they are happily enjoying the game!

[Grim.Reaper]

I think we also always have to remember that people posting on any forum typically represents a very small minority of actual players of the game.  Mostly people that post claim to have issues, which leaves the vast majority of the people not posting happily enjoying the game.  And if the developer's claims are true, there are hundreds of thousands of Rome players so these people complaining are tiny in the end.  They just tend to have very loud mouths making them seem larger in numbers:)

wouldn't go that far. I have had issues with games and went to the forums only to see that plenty of people have the same issue I am experiencing. I just don't feel the need to add another post to the thread. so people not posting doesn't mean they are happily enjoying the game!

I am still willing to bet the vast majority of the players never even go to the forum...but I do concede I am sure a number of those people aren't always happy either.