As a supported of mods including day of defeat on hl and later RO, I have a major problem, but it is not necessarily the game I am most disappointed in. I have been looking at many many threads where people have performance issues, and the members of the 'dev team' or the people employed to do forum PR seem to come out with nothing except one of the following:
'you need a better computer...'
'it's hard work try making a game yourself...'
This ignores the fact that many people with performance issues have either top end systems, or can play graphically superior games at a consistently good fps etc etc.
I truly do believe that if TWI admitted to a rushed, flawed game, the community would have sympathy to some extent, am certainly more respect from the gamers struggling at present.
I believe the childish 'bashing' is unnecessary but something must be done.
Nothing needs to be done.... you don't deserve an apology, in fact nobody does.
You need a better computer is indeed true.
Anybody remember when UT2004 came out? I bought it the moment it came out.... my computer was top notch at the time, yet I couldn't max out my video settings and I had to wait a year or two later before I could upgrade and max my settings out, simply because it was too much for my system.
Most games that come out do this. They are released at a time where the average computer can run it on medium settings and rarely on max settings. It gives the game a bit of longevity as it gets older compared to newer released games. In a year or two, most computers are better and more powerful and while newer games are released with better graphics, you can now increase your video quality to be about par to the newer games so they don't seem as dated.
If the game was possible for everyone to max out the graphics on the very first day with their average computers and average video graphics, in about a year all those people would be complaining that the graphics are dated.
^ And if that was the case that maxing out your graphics was possible for everybody on day one of the release, then there wouldn't be any need for video settings in the first place would there?
As it goes for other games being "Graphically Superior"....... that's subjective to the individual. Someone in another thread said that Medal of Honor: Airborne looked better than RO2 and supplied an example image....... sorry but to me I wasn't impressed and didn't look as good.
Thus, Subjective.
And as it has been said countless times already, for those people trying to compare RO2 to other games that run the U3 engine and work just fine on their systems, remember that RO2 is using a modified version of the U3 Engine (dubbed the U3.5) and thus, is more intensive and requires more resources than your average U3 engine game.
^ For those who can, think back to when Half-Life 1 came out. It ran on the Quake I Engine but was heavily modified. While my system at the time could handle Quake I and run very smoothly, HL1 sucked the crap out of my system and I had to lower my settings a lot just to make it run smooth until a few years later when I got a new video card and more RAM.
Tripwire doesn't have to apologize for something every other game developer has done in the past and will keep doing in the future..... and they don't have to admit a single thing if those things never were true.
You're assuming what was done behind the scenes, nothing more.
Added:
By the way, how many patches did Valve release for Half-Life & its mods over the last 10 years it was popular?
Do any of you remember how buggy and glitchy that game was when it was first released?
I imagine some in here remember, but I'd suspect most in here don't as they were probably still playing with alphabet blocks with a pacifier in their mouths during that time.
And also keep in mind that when Valve released Half-Life 1.... they were a small indie company too.
To the OP:
I am in the IT field. I was a member of an IT Help Desk for approx 7 years, and when my friends found out I worked on computers they started hounding me with their issues as well. This is what I've learned from my experiences.........most people shouldn't be allowed to own a computer. A couple of easy questions to weed out the idiots.
1. Do you have anti-virus software installed, is it updated at least weekly, and does it do a weekly scan of your entire system?
2. Do you do routine maintenance, like cleaning up uneeded files and registry entries, using a program like CCleaner?
3. How many tool bars are installed in your web browser? IE Yahoo toolbar, Google toolbar, Bing etc? The list goes on and on, but the answer should be "None!"
4. Do you actually read before you click "OK" to installing something that just happens to popup when you're in the middle of doing something else?
5. Do you run Windows updates on your computer when they are available? Is your computer even configured to automatically download updates?
I could go on, but the people who are in tune with my line of thought know where I'm going. I'd be willing to bet that at least 50% of what people are calling bugs, are not bugs at all but configuration issues with their own computers. Chances are the people that report they have very little issues with the game are the ones that answered all the above questions correctly.
See I do all of that and more.... I have AVG Anti Virus, Registry Mechanic and Ad-Aware running on my system..... and everything tells me that my system is as healthy as a horse, clean, defragged, updated and smooth.
Most in here have mocked my GeForce 210 4GB video card I'm using, yet I can still run the game with no crashing while still having most of my settings set to Ultra.... the price I have to pay is having to drop my resolution down a bit.... but it runs smooth, very few glitches and I enjoy it without any crashing.
Most of the problems I have been having during the beta were related to issues on my end of things, not the game itself.... and most of the issues relating to the game were fixed in patches, so I have little to complain about.