Ex Total War Developer Exposes Rome 2 DISASTER 

If the Total War players had put their foot down earlier, we would have had better games, but most consumers have neither taste nor self-respect.

@@MrBell-iq3smdefinitely; last years Warhammer, hyenas and pharaoh controversy seems completely forgotten now that CA have released a passable DLC that has been spliced into 3rds to make it seem cheaper. It helps that there is barely anything that even comes close to resembling total war, CA has no real competitors in their niche market.

@@p1971cuda I think the competition is on the rise. I loved Empire and Napoleon Total War for example, and now I am looking forward to Ultimate General: American Revolution, hoping that the game will be great, and the studio expands the setting. If CA released an Empire 2 I wouldn't touch it.

@@MrBell-iq3sm yeah it's out on steam rn, I was thinking of getting it soon. I will say though it isn't too much of a competitor. People love spectacle and while UG has the tactics of the older Total wars it doesn't have the spectacle that made TW so popular. Can't wait for Total war Empire 2 with George Washington and his wooden teeth giving him +5 melee attack. lol

@@p1971cuda Maybe, but TW was usually a rather shallow experience outside of warfare. The economy tended to by not very deep, politics was a sidenote and diplomacy was a mess. Perhaps games that are more fleshed out will take over the TW niche. I know many players started with TW and later preferred Paradox games.

When the French were described as "Ass-Weasels" by English generals in Medieval 2, I fell in love with Total War. Imagine what they could be like in Warhammer! (I mean the speeches, not the French.)

It probably was. I'm glad he still speaks about it. Because damn everyone blaming this one guy was just bullsh*t imo.

​@@Kvs-vf9nthe is still accountable for lying through his teeth to the entire community. Blacklist ca devs, former and current and boycott creative assembly, thats all we should be doing. Otherwise theyre just going to keep doing the same crap.

I'm going to play Shogun 2 and remember the glorydays. Those were the days, boys! We'll never see its like again. Warhammer ruined all of that.

​@@skitkjell85if you really believe that then you haven't been paying attention for the past ten years.

@@skitkjell85 warhammer is a totally separate dev team

Ai learning has advance so much, is it that hard to implement a 'ai' learning style that gradually improve the skill of the AI through generations. Self-driving cars use the same method.

The definition of insanity is buying the same game over n over again

​@@thesecondsilvereich7828and expecting different outcome 😭

@@Icarus47249fd Mate, Total War AI is not the same as current "generative AI". TW AI is just a set of parameters that are hard coded.

While starcraft 2 had insane ai in 2010 that trumps every total war combined

12

Takes about that long now for truth to be told

Wanna feel even older? That game was my childhood game when i was lile 10-11. Im an adult since 2 years now

They should just keep the dates to themselves, no need to this to us.

And I played over 1000 hours of Rome 2… it was that long ago, yeesh.

10 years later I still want to find the absoloute donkey that thought having 3 out of 4 settlements being unwalled was a good decision. Ca has ben doing thos garbage system for a decade now.

I’m still a slave because Rome 1 was so good as a kid

@@Geometrys play RIS for Rome Remastered and all your wishes will be granted.

Yeah rome remastered is basically rome 1 with ugly UI but better textures. I think it'll be a great modding bed.

@@loowick4074 just look into RTR: Imperium Surrectum

Rome 1 and Medieval 2 are goated-- and Warhammer Total War is a masterpiece, regardless of controversy. Shogun 2, that Viking one, that Chinese one, Empire even, the latest Egyptian total shidshow-- couldn't care less. Will continue to play good games and put hundreds of hours into their oldest titles (and Warhammer) and not buy a single new title because you already know they're gonna be dogwater.

I read that in a heavy scottish accent

''these days'' more like since 2008 on. 16 years now. Golden age ended with post-Medieval 2!

I've read it as ASCA No pan here 😢

Should have given up since rome 2 buddy.

Well I did have a lot of fun with Warhammer, although I realize the amount of success that had was absolutely no good for their integrity. In fact Rome 2 was my first total war so there was rose coloured glasses there for a long time. I didn't really experience the brilliance of the older games.

The sad thing is there are little bits of good ideas in their newer titles. Personally I think a lot of people missed out on a solid game with Three Kingdoms because it's not a setting western audiences have much investment in (diplomacy is a huge step up from any other TW game, and there are some neat new features and balance ideas that I wish we could get in a Empire or Napoleon 2). Troy looks (and sounds) great, and tried to play around with the economics even more (idk if I like that system though, I didn't play enough of that game to have a solid opinion). Rome 2 and Attila are both decent games now, it's just a shame their reputation was ruined by the state they both launched in. From what I've seen Thrones actually has decent sieges, although I never actually bought that one and I don't really have any intention to at this point. The problem is CA's management seems to be incredibly toxic and they (or maybe SEGA) insist on trying to keep up this annual launch cycle that prevents subsequent games from actually improving on their predecessors and puts too much strain on devs' abilities to wrangle their pretty ancient engine into doing what they want it to.

@@alekssavic1154 Absolutely agree with all of that. And I also liked the direction they were starting to go with diplomacy in Three Kingdoms.

Paradox is going the same way

Public trading = the beginning of the end. At least Paradox is actively panicking to increase quality after steamers like cityskyline 2, Life By You and Imperator.

@@informitas0117 Don't forget Vic3 as well.

@@informitas0117 they’re still working on imperator

CA when they have to make good maps and fine tune unit interactions and battle dynamics 😴😴😴 CA when they have to add an arbitrary powerscaling bar/button on the campaign which just adds stats to units 🎉🎉🎉🎉

Did they ever? Feel like soldiers at your command? The lack of autonomy and required micromanagement has always been immersion breaking for me.

@@g00gleisgayerthanaids56 people are trying to make old total wars appear like something they are absolutley not (simulators)

Went from a sim to rts

@@rawbird5341 total war was never a sim game

He deserves no sympathy, he knowingly mislead the entire consumer base. Coming out of the closet 10 years later just to say "sorry guys, it actually wasnt me or the poor devs, it was these big shadowy corporatists all along!" They had no game, no real product, no real testing, but he still came out with all that bullshit... anything him or any of ca's employees (current or former) work on, should be completely blacklisted from the entire consumerbase, same with EA and all those shitters.

Well put.

@@NatrajChaturvedi Thank you sir. I know I sometimes there are Real people on the other end of my posts. I know I have been a proverbial arse myself more than a few occasion. But I can see his humility here and genuine sincere remorse for all that happened, and we now know was clearly not in his control. I also know that I have on a few occasions in my life, under incredible pressure, folded like a lawn chair. Again glad he is doing well and found the time to write that all out for us. I bet that was incredibly cathartic for him. I will climb down from my soap box now. Do hope you and your family are doing well, where ever in the world you maybe! God Bless

An exemplar for game developers?! Murray lied and lied and lied. He couldn’t stop running his mouth, building expectation no product could ever reach. And then he very sensibly went into hiding to avoid accountability. Exemplar my arse!

Hey, how is Knights of Honor 2 these days? I’ve been kind of following it a bit when it first released with plans of getting it during a sale. What are you enjoying about it so far and how does its current state compare to the release state?

Ooooh I forgot UGAR released. Thank you for the reminder!

@@seanwalters1977 You're welcome. It's not finished yet, but you can purchase it and play the early access version.

@@emanuelalfred1565 I haven't played the second one yet. I only played the first game, but from what I know KoH II is underrated and has a lot to offer.

@@seanwalters1977 UGAR isn’t quite there yet.. has potential however. They should change the controls to match Rome 2 and people would play the shit out of it.

Past bugs. All the worst bugs have been removed with and since the release of the Imperator edition. Julian's article details this too. That after the f#$% up of a release and most of the design team moved on to the newest project, the programmers among the dev team could actually do what they wanted to do before the release: quality control and bug-fixes for the shoehorned in features. He contemplated sabotaging it (sort of) because the community had gotten it into their heads he was fired before the patches started rolling out, explaining why the game was in an improved state. He left some time into Attila's dev cycle.

Nah it's always the "higher up" problem many studio ruined because of that

@@chocho6766 could very well be the case, and it probably is. But I’d like to hear why it was exactly. Budget reasons, inexperience, cut throat business practices? Being at the leadership level myself (in a different field) I’d like to know what was driving the leadership to act the way they did.

He blamed the design team more than any for pushing new features (work for his team) late in development. Management was too one-sided in their support of designers in that regard and games suffered on release for it.

@@RM-cv4tl Greed. Entitlement. Insecurity. Like it does pretty much every bad leader.

Exactly, its such a simple and stupid narrative that it actually holds no water. Theyre culpable and no fuckin nuremburg defense is going to fuckin cut it. "We were just doin our jobs" yeah yeah yeah, weve all heard that before...

Your logic falls apart when used in any other industry... its not always just the leadership, the leaders cant do anything, cant make a product at all. A ceo walks into a restaurant and says customers arent getting in and out fast enough, he sees the chicken sandwiches take the longest to cook so he instructs the cooks to take 3 minutes off the cook time. Nevermind the risk of salmonella... who is actually at fault here? The correct answer is both. Yeah your boss can make up stupid shit but its on you if you follow through with it and serve up subpar, unfinished products/service. The nuremburg defense is literally bullshit, why do you people eat it up so easily?

original staff is what made rome 1 and medievial 2 good nowadays ca just try to comercial scam gamers

NDA most likely

NDA period has passed, and he can safely say these without getting sued to hell by CA and SEGA.

The devs dont want the shitstorm at ca to follow them to new jobs, if youre smart you wont buy games that these devs have worked on.

Total war found a new consumerbase that is much larger, much hungrier for product, and is already primed to be abused by games workshop. CA would be complete fools to not ride the warhammer train into the ground. If you want a historical title, make it yourself or look to a different dev team. Ca is never going back.

Yes, you can just change release dates, many studios have delayed games for better or for worse, but thats neither here nor there. Guessing your rigid, uncreative thinking is a big reason why youre a "former" developer, and not a current developer working in the industry. Hating the very demographic youre trying to sell shitty, unfinished products to? Lol youre a complete joke.

He was honest with his bias though. Placing the blame mainly on the leadership of the design team for asking him for what he know he can't deliver. When I read it, it explained a lot of differences Shogun2, Rome2 and 3Kingdoms. The latter games have way more features but Shogun2 was the better game because it was the most polished. CA definitely put more priority into design than programming, and as a programmer he was unable to deliver what they asked for and left.