State of the Game

I bought the game through impulse not even knowing steam was involved or was going to be involved... and impulse routed me into steam (and lucky me, I got to download the game twice?)... not happy about this at all... I really do prefer impulse as most of my more recent software (including the first sots) was purchased from impulse... so if there is a way to run sotsII without using steam or limit steam usage to just updates or just get updates through impulse (like I should be able to do anyway since I bought it from impulse!) then would someone please post the "how to do it" ...please...please...

If you have to use a digital provider to play multiplayer why can't it be from the one that I bought the game from ... please paradox, give me the choice...

I wish they can fix the bug that consuming too much CPU, so most of us can actually play the game.

I would prefer them to forget fixing the multi player part of the game and fix the single player issues first.

I hope today's patch is going to fix some of the issues in real time combat, cos its kind of terrible now. :laugh:

Is it just me, or has this been the year of incredibly unready game releases?

Sots 2 isn't even another month away from being ready, IMO (but Kerberos will get something awesome going eventually).

There really should be some consequences to Paradox for issuing the Okay, and to Kerberos for trying to go ahead with this.

If money had been the issue, many of us would have happily pre-paid knowing another month or two of development was necessary. Surely enough to get them by until they had a solid product.

It's easy to criticize in hindsight, but it's really amazing to me that a game with the scope of Sots 2 was released with as many CTD bugs, as unusable an interface as it has, and with as many features broken as it does. Their database schema is in flux. It's just not a good sign for something they're thinking is ready for prime time.

Sots really messed up. But they're not alone. Many other companies - some bigger, some smaller - managed to really make a mess of their releases this year. Is it just ambition? Or a shift in technology? Expectations?

All games - all software - releases with some bugs. But it's hard to fathom what Martin and others were thinking when they looked at the current state of sots 2 and said "yes, just a few small issues - purely cosmetic, remain: We're a 'Go' on release"?

anaris said:

Steam is a little bit bad, but I don't get why people would flat-out refuse to use it. Anyone care to message me and explain why they're so set against it?

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The file structure of the steam product, especially in the past, did not allow modding to work.
Furthenmore, patches get released on the official dev forums while the steam users need to wait for the steam versions of the patch to be released (which may take days and in some cases it took weeks) and so they can't play multiplayer until they are patched to the latest version as the rest of the non steam players.

Mordachai said:

If money had been the issue, many of us would have happily pre-paid knowing another month or two of development was necessary. Surely enough to get them by until they had a solid product.

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It's what we did, dude... and we also got the free DLCs.
The rest of your post is omitted because I agree 100% with all you said.

Back to the topic, I know that this game will reach and BEAT the magnitude of the first SOTS, it's all a matter of time, I won't ask for any refunds and I appreciate the freegiving of the DLCs till the end of November. The players don't seem to have noticed there are several substantial changes in the engine that have nothing to do with the combat model and graphic aspects of the 3d world.
After yesterday's patch, it seems to me there's mostly only glitches but no critical bugs so I trust the upgrade process will become easier and easier with the passing of time.
Be patient guys, the game is worth waiting for and Kerberos has really rocked with SOTS so they EARNED our trust.

This game will be receiving a lot of content fairly quickly (thanks K&P ), but because there was a lot of content missing from the game on release, would it be fair to say that the minimum requirements for this game, as currently listed, will become obsolete - requiring more/higher criteria?

I actually hope that code optimization and tightening will REDUCE the requirements.

Many of the slow-downs of this release can be laid on the feet of shoddy, broken, leaky and loose code.

I think you guys complains too much. Everyone knows that when you buy a game it's a gamble. Some games you will like and some games you will not like.
I've bought plenty of games I have just played for one hour, just because I didn't like them.
So when you spend your 30$ on a game you might get 1 hours entertainment or 100 hours, it's a gamble.
If you don't like that you should download a demo from the game and try it out, before you purchase it.
You guys are spoiled by Blizzard Entertainment who always releases perfect games.
But there are 100 minor studios publishing games too.

DrZoidberg said:

I You guys are spoiled by Blizzard Entertainment who always releases perfect games.

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Blizzard also makes a crapload of money with its on-line subscriptions. That allows them to hire a great number of developers beyond what it takes to run the on-line servers.

The question is not if, but when, PC game manufacturers will move to the subscription-based model, instead of the one-time fee.

TheBS said:

subscription-based model

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The future is now. I'm just waiting for the official announcement.

Ordo Impavidus said:

The future is now. I'm just waiting for the official announcement.

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As I mentioned in another post, I'd be willing to pay Valve $50/year for Steam (possibly with a pro-rated discount of $10 for every $50 in new game purchases over the year). I don't mind paying a subscription for something that saves me time and money, and on-line servers and bandwidth aren't free.

The consumer is still living in a world of up-front costs. But the reality is that up to 85% of software engineering cost is sustainment engineering, post-release costs. Businessmen and women have been trying to figure that out for years.

The on-line realm is where some consumers are willing to pay. The MMORPG subscriptions actually feed a lot of development money. There are other options too.

Unfortunately, the only place I've seen where pure, 100% sustainment engineering has worked has been in the Enterprise Linux space. SuSE first proved that IHVs, ISVs and enterprise consumers were willing to pay a lot more for 5+ years of ABI/API compatibility, which is costly to do in the open source world as the trailing edge software is farther and farther away from leading-edge. Red Hat quickly followed, and built a completely profitable model (SuSE was never profitable for Novell, Novell's other products subsidized it), and now offers sustaining up to 10 years. On the flip side, leading edge development is still done by the same, paid developers, in a greater community (with others, paid, unpaid, competitors, etc...). It's a 100% flip from traditional commercial software, instead of paying for new features, you pay for trailing edge sustainment. Red Hat's CEO flat out stated in 2008 he doesn't think home consumers should ever have to pay for their software, and re-clarified it's because he doesn't know how to make money in home consumer software (especially since Red Hat's margins are 1/10th those of other, commercial enterprise software companies for the same functionality).

I'd really like to see this happen in the entertainment world. It would work out best for both consumers and developers, better service for consumers, more sustainable models for developers. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do it. Only the on-line services model seems to be accepted in a subscription form, and even then with many asterisks. E.g., Steam, "I already paid for my game" (yet Steam costs Valve money to operate annually). It might literally be a "subscription" to a development house, who produces multiple games, not just a single game. The Downloadable Content (DLC) seems to be a move in this direction, and I wonder when we'll see "free" game engines, but you pay for the "playable content"?