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Could MP ever Peak again?
Do you think MP Could ever peak again?
I sersouly hopes so. This community suffered to long with shitty mechanis,etc...., Any more bad TW MP's, and we won't even have a group of players playing it, since the community is dead,people say.
Not for me, maybe for the new generation of players they can hit a nice place in the future. The community for me back in the shogun days was perfect and had many many memorable characters and great players not to mention a really well designed game. In terms of simple gameplay what alot of the newer players will never understand was the extreme importance of maps and every single feature on the map. Woods were of extreme importance as were hills even small ridges but there was also no hill that wasent takeable with the right team play or army movement.
Take the nagashima map for example there was many different ways to approach defence and offence, and battles were fought in stages, like stage 1 could the attacking army take the woods to the left of the defenders hill, then stage 2 could the attacking army use the treeline and their guns to outshoot the defenders on the hill (who had an advantage till this point) often more and more cavalry attacks would be made here to try to take away the attackers advantage of the treeline, the attacker could outshoot the defender at this point and the whole 4 armies each side would swivel to this new centre of the battle and the defender would have to cover their new left flank previously their rear, just too much to go into but it was absolutely amazing especially in heavy fog.
MP may peak again with the realease of Empire. If CA deliver on what they have promised, then we should get a well balanced and tactical game with a large variety of factions, and a much better mulitplayer system with a variety of multiplayer modes. Aaaand we get a multiplayer campaign! :beam:
If they don't... well I think that that will be it for Totalwar multiplayer.
The *variety of multipayer modes* may or may not appeal to longtime TW mpers. Most probably it wont - it ll get a new audience as Swoosh is saying. Why that is so, you can understand if you play mp for quite a good length of time - mp TW is hard to master and you need people to show you the ins and outs of the game - one at a time.
Also you are wasting your breath talking about CA promises, particularly in this subforum. CA has been promising things about mp for ages now - but they always deliver something playable like the retrofit mod half unoficially and most importantly ages after the community has been split a million times due to horrific bugs, imbalances, incomplete patches and mods and after being hit hard in its numbers since the vanilla games favor rush armies with the *fight* mainly happening as to which team will have the overpowered units or factions.
Essentially every version means a new bunch of players that wont move to the others because they comfortably win with the x units/faction/exploit. MP is particularly sensitive to such things - the vanilla game needs to be working perfectly to even start talking about fixing gamaplay balance and that isnt the case with TW relases past RTW that have about a trillion bugs each at release date - you cant expect a healthy and growing mp community with the shield bug - various animation bugs like the 2 handed weapon bug and vanilla M2 cavalry charge power.
All this doesnt mean that CA dont care about their games - its just means that CA is splitting its efforts in fixing things in order to satisfy all customers in analogy to their share of the sales naturally - and since TW is aiming at attracting happy SPers like yourself these days, the SP gets the lions share.
CA didnt have to offer new modes to get an mp community - it had one and quite numerous, thriving and dedicated actually. It was actually CA itself that showed them the door.
Its best if one knows the subject he is posting about - Tolkien said it best; *the wise speak only of what they know*
!it burnsus!
You seem to assume that I only favour the Singeplayer game and know nothing of the multiplayer situation. While I do play mostly on Singleplayer I'm not a total stranger to Multiplayer. :P
I'm well aware of the problems facing the TW MP community. I realise that Rome and Medieval 2 had a whole host of issues that have fractured and driven away a good portion of the MP playerbase.
I have played both Shogun and Medieval in MP, although it was usually on large scale LAN, rather than Online. I have never even attempte to play Rome or Med 2 on multiplayer, because I know how unfair and unbalanced both games can be. (Also because the
Just because I'm enthusiastic, it doesn't mean I don't know what I'm talking about :P I stand by what I said. If CA can deliver a solid, balanced title with improved matchmaking and enhanced multiplayer features it might give the MP community something to rally around. If CA can make Empire the same kind of MP experience Shogun was, the community will quickly make a comeback. Especially with the influx of new players Empire should bring.
As for having a variety of modes (and I am assuming they mean things like King of the Hill, or something similar) it can't hurt can it? Different modes present different challenges. If Last Man Standing gets boring, or if you aren't any good at it, atleast there will be an alternative game type to try.
Give Empire a chance before condemning the multiplayer aspects? After all. We don't know how good it will be until we play it for ourselves.
Yes, indeed i assumed so since you posted in the Empire forum that even you may be *temped to try* all the new mp options.
Please excuse me if i sound like determined to axe your enthusiasm or something - that is not my intent.
I hope Empire is good although i doubt it will be - call me what you will. That doesnt mean i condemn people who think that the game will be good - actually it will most likely be loved and be a success - however this is irrelevant to me.
As for modes i actually meant the mp campaign mode and the naval battles mp mode which are new officially. If CA makes a very good mp player in naval battles i am sincerely not interested at all - in fact i never wanted to play naval battles and this is a great put off for me in Empire. I doubt it will though and i ll tell you why; until now CA supported and balanced abyssmaly the land battles that were the only mp mode - now it seems that out of magic they ll manage to support and balance well three types of mp mode, all distinct and with their own individual needs.
Lets say that i am sceptical of this to say the least.
From preview videos the only thing that looks good about battles in Empire is the graphics - the gameplay looks boring and typically of latest TW games unbalanced and full of uneccessary graphical touches *for clarity*.
If you are thinking to try mp make sure you do it so through people you know and trust - it can be a very distressing experience if you just show up and play whoever from zero - unfortunately not all people online are honourable or pleasant.
!it burnsus!
You are wrong guys. Many people plays a lot. They just don't use .org due to political correction here.
I see they said they will include a mp campaign post release for empire totalwar (where i heard that one b4? hmm), still it will need an excellent battle engine and a well designed foyer and battle setups not the tripe theyre dishing out in rome and mtw2 for me to even consider coming back. What really got me aside from the dumbed down gameplay in rome and mtw2 was that the foyer was just about the worst id ever seen in a mp game black background? crap communication tools? and the effort to get into a battle half the time just wasent worth it.
on the other hand what we had into mtw 1
elite cavarly on flat area can't break cheap infantry
elite horse archers can't shot during move
artillery can't move - even during siege
everything has pros and cons Swoosh
Still doesent change the fact mtw 1 was a far superior game in terms of gameplay.
elite cavarly on flat area can't break cheap infantry - Orly?
elite horse archers can't shot during move - Yes but they werent supposed to in mtw1 and took more skill to play.
artillery can't move - even during siege - Yes because seige is such a popular mp gaming sensation.
Like I said, I think CA needs to get on the ball already, if they ever will, and make a good quality MP game. I also think the MP players, old and new, need to start playing also to help out the MP community again.
this game is really not meant for MP... TW is/was/and will probably always be a SP game...
CA had proven that with every release so I don't think that this time it would be different...
Yep Swoosh - I remember that into mtw 1 i was angry when my elite cavarly could not break typical spearmen.
Especially after reading about polish husaria destroying 5 times bigger pikemen units.
Artillery couldn't move and it was ok for you? Sieges into mtw 1 were stupid mostly because you could not move cannons.
And sorry but practically every eastern european horse archer could shot when running or attacking. It was normal here and it was classical tactic used by Mongols, Poles and Russians.
MTW 1 was better to multi because was more stable. But into MTW 2 on latest rules gameplay is really good again.
12500, max 8 cav and 4 ha really let us play skirmish. And situation when cavarly hit infantry and kill 50% of men only with charge is ok cause (for 12500 you can buy so many infantrymen) rest is enough to kill cav.
All in all - stop yelling start playing.
I been saying that for years M8, start playing, stop aruging. But a lot of people here, if the game isn't JUST like STW, they refuse to play it, or some here won't even "waste the time" for at least trying it out. How can someone help the MP community if the person just sits around and complain about TW MP all the time on .Org, CCS, or whenever you are. That what makes me so mad.
It was a balancing factor that spearmen beat cavalry, maybe not realistic in some cases but still it made for good gameplay, anyway spearmen hardly featured in mtw1 online battles cavalry did.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
About artillery u miss my point i dont care for seiges or seige weapons they were never balanced or fun at all. Most games i played in all the totalwar games had the title no arty.
And again about horse archers i was stating that they were never meant to shoot on the move in the game design, ofc they did in history. But still moving stopping shooting moving with cavs required alot more micro managing and was a nice aspect to the game. Infact this aspect of the game often seperated the good players for the bad as evidenced with kocmoc and magyarkhan their control of armies and micro was some of the best seen. Yet it was possible to win without them at all as you would know if you ever had the pleasure of facing and being trumped by AMP in shogun.
Rules are ok and needed in the new totalwar games but i bet most games consist of the max allowed for that unit each side like 8 cav max games having each army with 8 cavs due to the game imbalances.
I dont yell about totalwar anymore :) infact its quite far from my thoughts i only nip back to check if the scene has progressed or been revitalised as one day id like to come back and play. If u were reading the org around the release of kingdoms you would see that i was one of the few old timers praising the games single player mode (credit where its due) MP mtw2 is an improvement on rome totalwar but still miles from the gameplay attained in shogun and mtw1 mp imo.
All that said some parts about empire totalwar sound ok, so ill wait and see and maybe buy and play online if i deem it good enough to invest time in.
Understand most people here were posting positive stuff about the game even after we saw it decline for years, we have a right to be sceptical about the new games. If ca can pull off two balanced battle games in 1 sea and land ill eat my hat. I hope they do but i wont blindly get hyped up about it when i know the result will most likely be a watered down land battle game.
Warman i did come back and play mtw2, i had a series of 1v1 games vs kyolic who was active at the time to check the game out with this mod everyone was raving about. The result was the games were too easy and dident require much to win at all some basic movement and tactics won the games for me vs an active player, the game seemed more about army selection than much else, the shootouts were ok but nothing like the pav or musket battles from mtw1 or stw just not the same depth.
It doesent take a rocket scientist to find out why the old community just dissapeared with the release of rome, the game was a shadow of the ones before it in multiplayer. Mtw2 was an improvement but still isent upto the standards set by the first two games.
What do i need to play online these days? kingdoms and?
I understand if you hontestly don't like the game Swooshy, But I'm saying if someone not playing TW MP because of any other reason (besides they just don't like it), they just as bad as the new players who don't help.
Thx for serious reply Swooshy. But I must disagree with you into 1 thing.
If you want to play good now, you need even more "micro skills" than earlier.
Especially into cav - with full respect for good times (most of people here know that I liked
light cav and its dance into mtw 1) - now you have to be better with cav. You don't dance- its bloody fight. If you lost control for 5 sec - you are dead - no time to correct mistake. You have to repeat charges and repeat it well.
i think that with empire, any m2tw/rtw mp will pretty much die down. But there's hope, hopefully. ETW multiplayer seems to be looking up, with multiplayer campaigns and the like.
The original STW (The one in the red box not the Warlords Edition) had the best mp of any Total War game to date. Last man standing never got boring (mp participation rose continuously during the year that original STW was in use) because the tactical gameplay had great depth and variety, and the units were so well balanced that you didn't need unit limiting rules, although, you had to be an expert to handle the warrior monk rush because that unit was out of balance by 10%. The units have to be balanced to 10% or better for the tactical gameplay to achieve its potential because multiplayers can take advantage of imbalances that small.
It's a fact that mp participation dropped to 30% of what it had been under STW with the release of the Warlords Edition (STW/MI). The reason was poor playbance notwithstanding the introduction of new unit types and different game modes. The battle engine's designer, Longjohn, didn't balance this version which is why it had poor playbalance. He returned for MTW which is why the playbalance in that game improved, and this revived the mp community. However, by this time he was not balancing the units to better than 25% which he had decided was good enough. Eventually the players uncovered the imbalances and the community declined, although, it took quite a while to discover the exploits because there were such a large number of unit types and differing factions in the game. Longjohn left sometime during the development of RTW, and we all know the consequences of that not only to the playbalance but also to the battle engine itself.
With Empire CA is no longer designing a rock, paper, scissors battle engine. It seems to me that this should be easier to balance since it's a shooting game. However, I no longer see much interest on the part of CA to fine tune their games for improved playbalance. They are content to pitch their game to players who aren't interested in playbalance. These players may actually want imbalances that they can exploit to exist. Of course, it's self defeating because eventually lots of players learn the exploits and then the tactical gameplay converges to a limited scope rather than diverging to the rich tactical gameplay that could be contained in a well designed battle engine. And, that's the rub because it's easier for CA to design a poor engine with poor playbalance than a good engine with good playbalance. There is no incentive for CA to do the later if players are content with the former.
I don't want to spend my time learning exploits, and from what I can see there are a lot of highly skilled players who feel the same way because they no longer play total war mp.
The problem with the micro skills necessary, is that it really sucks some of the fun from the game. The earlier versions were all about unit match ups, how to gain an advantage in the battle by delaying battle elsewhere while focusing on another area, but MTW2, especially the cavalry seems more about how you use your unit than what unit you use. A great heavy cav unit not micromanaged properly can very well end up being a waste of cav, even against inferior units.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
When people like swoosh and puzz3D say that multiplayer is fixed (or just somewhere near shogun levels) i will be back in a flash, even mtw and vi with thier little bit of imbalance were great fun... but rome... the battles are just not fun, i didn't even really enjoy single player battles that much and thats where balance is far less important...
Get a fairly balanced mp and im sure lots of vets would come back until then the newer players who can live with the inbalance can keep it running...
Or maybe learn how to play into new conditions :)
Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Argeed Krook :yes::medievalcheers::rtwyes:. Sure, I'll take a good VI battle or even a good STW battle anyday over RTW or M2TW, but does that mean I am going to stop playing them because one unit might not have 5% of this, or might move 1.2 spaces a different way? Hell No, I think people are to concern of the very small details in the game.
My final eight cents
:bow:
I did, enjoyed it for a while, but in the end it wasn't as fulfilling as the older versions were. I'd say that is the thing with many of us grognards. It's not that we didn't/couldn't learn to play in the new conditions, but the fact that the new conditions weren't as enjoyable as the old ones. It's a huge fallacy to assume that losing makes a game unenjoyable, when in fact it is the gameplay itself that contributes to unenjoyable battles.Quote:
Originally Posted by KrooK
Especially when Ducky proved he was still one of the best under new conditions.
Oh, hey ducky :D
Quote:
Originally Posted by Puzz3D
Amen.
Im quite happy i was hardcore active at those times, it was without a doubt the best onlineexperience i ever made in a online Game. Alone the personalities was more than perfect, some called it honor and indeed, it was a honor to play with many great persons at those times. It was the start of a new age, internet was new, i myself played in the early days on a 56k modem... which worked quite nice, if u had a cable host.
Anyway, maybe some of you old boys read this hear, shogun was a perfect game and still is today. I really think on all the fun i had with you all....lemme press a tear out :D
Koc