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Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

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Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#41

Post by harryf »

simplicio wrote: post #19
LarsDu88 wrote: post #2

I can't believe it's been 10 years since this game came out. Rome I still has a special place in my heart. Probably spent more hours playing that game than any other. Even inspired me to read some Plutarch to learn about the lives of famous generals. Rome II was somehow a worse game. Especially weird because it came right after Shogun 2 and its amazing expansion pack which are the best games in the series bar none. Q…

The AI was never good, but before Rome II it seemed like it either got a little better with each iteration, or at least, the parts that got worse had to do with incorporating new mechanics (Empire's AI was terrible, but it was pretty obviously because trying to jump from armies with swords and arrows to those with muskets and cannon was a big change). Outside of the navel stuff, Rome II's combat wasn't wildly differe…

I used to be a fan of the Total War games, back from the first Shogun Total War in 2000. The AI was never that great but was good enough to make the game fun to play. The main thing was the battlefield mechanics worked well, rewarding smarter tactics, like flanking manoeuvres, which could allow a smaller force to defeat a much larger one.

The original Rome Total War was probably the most fun and Medieval Total War was enjoyable.

After that it just went downhill, adding pointless features while worsening the battlefield gameplay. The first Warhammer Total War was where I tapped out - the limited size of battlefields meant it basically became a tower defence game, fought in three columns.

Reading this, seems like they became a victim of their own success.

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#42

Post by avereveard »

I remember those times, I loved the total war series dearly, and was burned by empire total war, which was a total mess at launch and never got quite to the point where it was an engaging game, due to the constant ai mishaps, bugs, wonky unit balance and a naval layer that was just tacked on hastily.

I agree that the backslash was unfair to te single dev, as the entirety of RTWII was a mess, for example with the new building system which was adding complexity without gameplay, or the larger map being too porous for the way a total war game played with unit stacks, and there was frankly too little time for a single dev to make a dent into years of layered systems

the thing I remember tho is that Sony was largely blamed for the downfall, not CA, and not single developer, at least in the more "sane" part of internet. Without taking away from this person personal experience, which sucks, I don't think the reputation damage really extends further than the few nut cases that obsessed over him

that said, I enjoyed reading the retrospective, and I look forward to KSP2 NDA expirations as well.

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#43

Post by EZ-E »

sitharus wrote: post #29
EZ-E wrote: post #14

> Let me give you a concrete example that demonstrates the relationship between the programmers and design leadership, and led to problems that contributed to the bad launch state of the game. One of the main new features included in Rome II was combined land and naval battles. Since Empire we’d had naval battles, but they were completely separate from land battles, and the codebase had been developed without any exp…

> An healthier way to respond would have been "Sure, but because of X and Y difficulties please consider the time to finish development will be increased by Z" Yes, and from the article it seems that the author also agrees. However from my reading the leadership was so top-down and closed minded that if you said this the best case is that you’d be told you’re wrong and it was completely achievable because they felt t…

I feel grateful I don't experience this at my job (so far).

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#44

Post by EZ-E »

Aeolun wrote: post #17
EZ-E wrote: post #14

> Let me give you a concrete example that demonstrates the relationship between the programmers and design leadership, and led to problems that contributed to the bad launch state of the game. One of the main new features included in Rome II was combined land and naval battles. Since Empire we’d had naval battles, but they were completely separate from land battles, and the codebase had been developed without any exp…

> However I was shocked to learn that the game was not playable until very late That seems rather common for many projects? If you have so many pieces developed in isolation, putting them together only really starts to happen when you get higher time pressure.

Even if it's common, I still don't think it's good.

Some games seem to be made playable way earlier then in the case of Rome 2. Look at Baldurs Gate 3 and soon for Path of Exile 2 - all the content is not there yet but the main "game loop" and features are there, this seems like a great way to get feedback, and have time to adjust if necessary. In the case of Rome 2 I guess the management imposed deadlines that did not allow this to begin with. The author does speak of a demo for E3 but it seems like a small piece that was artificially setup to look good.

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#45

Post by sensanaty »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #32
intelVISA wrote: post #7

The fall of CA has been sad to watch, many studios wrestle against a similar fate once the money and grifters roll in.

I have mixed feelings about their handling of TW Warhammer III. Parts of it are harder to defend (Initial campaign, buggy releases) but the expectations of the fans are arguably a bit crazy. I have 1.8k hours between TWW II + III, which probably isn't an outlier of the typical fan i read feedback from as a lurker on /r/TotalWar. People expect a DLC provide them 100s of hours of new/fresh gameplay that will allow them…

Subreddits are generally cesspools, especially games like these.

Like you said, when people have literally thousands of hours spent on something, they can get passionate about it to a bit of an unhealthy degree.

I just bought WH3 the other day, and at least as a fresh player it's a crazy good game. I'm sure there's lots to be desired in terms of balance and all that, but that's the kind of thing you start worrying once you're 1000 hours into the game. For now my sole focus is "Holy shit a giant boat skeleton colossus that shoots a giant cannonball?!", repeated for every single new enemy type I see.

The game has so much content it's almost overwhelming, to be honest, so I can see myself spending the next 800 hours being amazed by everything until I start seeing cracks.

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#46

Post by fakedang »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #5

Now having read most of the article, and having done quite a bit of game development myself... it sounds like a large amount of the problems with Rome II and the engine they were building was the navmesh. The navmesh is a sort of 3d mesh where the center of every triangle defines a node on a graph which can be used for pathfinding using algorithms like Astar. It sounds like they needed people to manually create and o…

So how did you capture the Black Ship? I would basically use a bunch of fire arrows from bow kobayas to set it on fire. Others would use a pair of Nanban trade ships on either side to do a double barrage at the same time. And then others go ham with a heavy bune fleet.

Which route did you go for?

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#47

Post by fakedang »

Aeolun wrote: post #16
oraphalous wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our men are running from the battlefield! Shameful display! --- Good times...

Isn't that when the enemy general/army is running from the battlefield? At least I wouldn't call my own performance shameful.

No, it's when your soldiers run from the battle. That's your advisor informing you that you hired a bunch of cowards.

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#48

Post by langsoul-com »

langsoul-com wrote: post #40

The problem that everything is good because it's profitable is quite insidious. Usually, these early warning signs don't come into effect until much much later. And by then it's almost too late. See total war nkw with the latest Pharaoh release. The debt collector has come to get their due, with interest.

It's also important to gauge how the company will pan out in the future. Leadership comes and goes, but the fundamental culture, incentives, self selection out and which type of person gets hired.

Re: Total War: Rome II and Creative Assembly – My Statement Ten Years On

#50

Post by ryandv »

Rome: Total War was probably one of my top three favorite games growing up as a kid. The House of Brutii was probably my favorite faction, even after trying a couple mods like Extended Greek Mod which tried to round out the non-Roman factions with greater strategic depth. The sheer sense of scale and the "just one more turn" mechanic with macro-scale strategy zooming into tactical micromanagement in the battle layer was such a compelling formula, and I even listen to the OST every now and then all these years later. Absolute masterwork of a title.

In contrast, to this day I have yet to play Rome II: Total War after the backlash from its "disastrous launch."

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