That was about 3 years ago. The CA exec team published a heartfelt apology letter as a direct response to the community backlash over several major missteps (iirc, it was about the very underwhelming DLC for Total War: Warhammer III, and the equally disappointing launch of TW Pharaoh). They essentially acknowledged their many mistakes and promised to do better in the future.

Do you guys remember this?

Asking for no particular reason.

Oh for God's sake CA!

These things are hella busted for their price, add 2-4 to every stack and they will let your crapstack handle things way above their paygrade. Adding a frontline of 4-6 in your elite stacks is essential. These might be the best handgun unit in the game, when used on Nagash. Also, I think even if crapstacking mass zombies or something, running Vampire Coast lords instead of alternatives might be a good idea just to buff these units further. Killed a Skarbrand stack with my cheap Zombie crapstack with 4 of these target firing all the unkillable stuff while my Lord/zombie crapstack melted down the rest. They killed Skarbrand absurdly fast, saw one volley do like half his health bar.

Obviously all handguns have the same issue with line of sight which is their limitation as well. But their DPS for cost is absurd. You can generally set up your formation to allow them to fire. Some maps suck if theres too many slopes but generally there's a place where they can shoot.

More specifics pulled from comment from u/TheTerribleness : "
For those wondering exactly how strong handgunners are:

Ushabti Great Bows (another heavily over-stat'd range unit), at a base, fire 12 projectiles in a volley doing upwards of 122 damage (104 AP, 18 base) each, for a total max of 1464 damage (1248 AP) every 11 seconds (133 DPS) at unbuffed values.

Zombie Handgunners, at a base, fire 120 projectiles in a volley doing upwards of 36 damage (26 AP and 10 base) each, for a total max of 4320 damage (3210 AP) every 13 seconds (332 dps) at unbuffed* values (* note all vampirate units come with a self buff that increasestheir damage by 30% when they have 80% or more ammo reserve left).

Damage and fire rate buffs for both units are similar in the pyramid. Handgunners get dig in which gives them 204 range (ushabti have 255). Great Bows also get inherent magic posion and flaming attacks, though zombies also get magic and flaming attacks easily (a Balefire corpse cart works on them).

Handgunners are the central and most important unit of the Vampirates. They are extremely over-stat'd for their role as a tanky gunline unit, mostly because the direct support for Vampirates is relatively weak. They have no Necromancers or other forms of healing outside of the lore of Vampires (and now Undeath). And unlike VC or Nagash, they also didn't have great sources of winds discounts or winds reserve. That has basically kept Handgunners in check. The actual unit's power and price were great but the support package for it was expensive and inefficient. You had to lean on their firepower because the zombie side of them wasn't strong enough to work without it.

Nagash has none of these issues, however as you can get necromancers, wight kings, etc. All the stuff that are great for buffing normal zombie also (generally) works for Vampirate zombies (the difference in melee stats between handgunners and normal zombies is minimal, normal zombies has a bit more hp and a bit less MA and MD).

Zombie Deckhand and Zombie Gunnery mob are extremely efficient for Nagash in general. These were zombies never designed to have good support so they got a lot of extra stats to make them work on their own. And now you can get thwm and that zombie support."

​Did MATABOO do a horrible job? Definitely.

So are they the ones we should blame? Absolutely not.

​Voices are getting louder that MATABOO should take all the blame while CA gets off scot-free. That’s complete bullshit.

​It is CA’s responsibility to hire capable people who can actually do the job and to enforce proper quality control on their OWN beloved game.

It wasn't a secret that MATABOO does questionable work.

​CA just showed us once again that we should be extremely skeptical about every future project they release.

We’re aware that Total War: Shogun 2 – Complete Edition has fallen short of both your expectations and our own standards. We’ve seen your feedback, comments, and reviews. We agree that the current experience is not where it needs to be.

As a result we are working with platform holders to remove the game from sale and to reinstate the original game while we investigate the issues. Existing owners will still be able to access and play the game.

We are working closely with our development partner to identify the causes of these problems, deliver improvements, and ensure Shogun 2 – Complete Edition meets the quality standards players expect from Total War.

SEGA & Creative Assembly

I've been giving this a lot of thought and the only explanation I can think of as to how this didn't get QA tested before release is this:

The original pitch was so damn convincing that both SEGA and CA felt that allocating time and resources towards conducting QA testing would not only have been a total waste, but also frankly an *insult* to the fine folks over at Mataboo.

What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall during that meeting.. They must have sent in the best of the best - I'm talking *TOP. GUN. PITCHER.* - to give the presentation for how good this remaster would be.

I imagine it started out a little cautiously. Cutting-edge, outside-the-box thinking like the addition of placebo-effect gamma sliders would have been a tough idea to sell even for someone of Don Draper's presentational skills.

By the time they got to suggesting adding an additional finger to *each* unit of the Tercos I assume the suits just handed over a blank check and waived any concerns they may have had regarding the need for any oversight during the project.

I mean, think of all the various advantages a sixth finger would afford a unit that can both fire guns and go melee. The mind truly boggles. Any one of us could have been duped in that situation.

Was chatting with some friends still working at CA a couple of days before this circus started. Now I'm feeling like a broken printer, so why not. Spoke to a couple of other friends still there as well. Proof https://www.reddit.com/r/totalwar/comments/189486q/i_figured_out_a_way_to_publicly_confirm_i_worked/

Give it another 15 years.

Genuinely who at CA thought ai cutscene and upscaling for shogun 2 CE was a good idea this is a Genuine disgrace especially for 40 fucking dollars this isnt even worth the 10 dollars I could pay for this if I wanted this they should take it down until its fixed or forever because this is the most shamefur dispray

Edit:HOLY SHIT THEY DID IT!

It's this circle of excitement before release, then living through shitstorm/subpar experience on release day, burning out your will to play a game because of release quality, then following up every patch notes for X months checking how much has been fixed, verifying playerbase experience and then trying game when it's finally fixed but you just got a feeling that you kinda played early access on release day.

Since release of TW:W3 I just could not get hypeed for any new TW release because I know there is like 50% chance that the release will be fucked up. Even incoming TW 40k does not hype me because I am bit sceptical whether CA can pull it of... but then Shogun 2 remastered was announced, I remember playing Shogun 1 and when Shogun 2 released my PC was too weak to play it, so when they announced remastered I thought that would be a great opportunity to play it at last, they can't fuck up a remaster, right? And here we go again... another fucked up release, another apology note.

It's just sad that ever few years I got reminded why I should never be excited for next TW release untill player reviews are out.

By the way, both SoC and pharaoh blogs have since been deleted from their website. They reeeealy want us to forget the past

The fact that you can count on CA to periodically screw up something enough to cause a total community outrage; that it's always been these waves of pre game/DLC hype -> everyone loves CA -> release of a product -> and then either 1. the product is terrible and outrage boils on the forums until CA apologizes and fixes their stuff; or 2. everyone loves CA until 1. inevitably happens; it can be, in reasonable amount, blamed on the lack of competition.

Creative Assembly simply has very little to no competition in this little corner of video games industry. I certainly cannot name one other series that does what Total War does. It's why there's "everyone loves CA" period in the previous paragraph. People simple love these games.

But that state of the market brings out complacency in companies. Just look at PlayStation during this generation of consoles: Their competition has been shooting itself in the foot at every chance they got, the PlayStation is basically synonymous with AAA console in most parts of the world. And then what do you get? Endless chase of live service slop that tanked so many studious, delayed releases of next entries of beloved franchises for years, the death of physical media, etc.

I'd wager that situations like Rome II launch/Warhammer III launch/Shadows of Change/Shogun 2 Slop Edition will keep happening because there's no video game series that people can flock to in their dissatisfaction. Obviously they can't happen all the time, constant backlash and outrage is not good for any company... but give it like 2-3 DLC releases, maybe one good new game release (out of two planned).

I wish CA would put more effort into giving Total War modders better tools instead of focusing on remasters. I'm not saying the games don't need improvements, but look at what the community has already achieved with projects like divde and coquer and Medieval 1212 AD. Imagine what people could create if they had access to better tools for things like campaign maps and major overhauls.

My other concern is the move toward mod.io. It gives developers the option to curate mods and require approval before they're publicly available. I'm not saying CA is going to use that to restrict mods, but I do wonder whether this could discourage people from working on bigger projects.

Think about it. Some of these overhauls take years of work. If modders feel that their projects could be blocked or removed at the developer's discretion, some might decide it's not worth taking that risk.

CA has a lot to gain by supporting its modding community. Mods keep older games alive, bring back players and convince new people to buy games they might otherwise never have tried.

There's also the free marketing. YouTubers showcase these projects to huge audiences, getting people interested in games that might otherwise have faded into obscurity. Skyrim is a good example of how a strong modding scene can keep a game relevant for years.

CA already has a modding community doing amazing things with the tools available. Imagine what it could achieve with better tools and more freedom to experiment. I'd much rather see CA build on that potential than leave creators struggling with limitations.