Finally Multiplayer Gets A Lead Role

[Swoosh So]

With lack of new information on the game the mind wanders :D and gets into trouble :p

A question, has a mp game ever gained a huge audience recently without open betas?

Imagine if this video was from creative assembly, just imagine for a second what problems could have been avoided in the release of each of the totalwar games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuO2...eature=related

Kinda dawned on me that CA miss alot of comunity input about their games and this is the reason they normally ship with terrible bugs to ai and missing game features the community want ie chat foyers.

[tibilicus]

Didn't CA used to have people from the community test the game (including MP aspects) before it was released? Up until RTW at least. I may be mistaken but I'm sure this used to be the case.

[CBR]

Didn't CA used to have people from the community test the game (including MP aspects) before it was released? Up until RTW at least. I may be mistaken but I'm sure this used to be the case.

Only for patches. The RTW 1.1 patch was the last one.

[Tomisama]

When you sign up at the Total War War Room, they ask if you would be interested in beta testing.

If you want to participate, this is a good place to start

http://www.totalwar.com/warroom

[Swoosh So]

Heh thanks tomisama but i dont want to beta test sonic the hedgehog :) im sure thats the kind of thing theyre on about.
I too have in the past beta tested totalwar patches but was wondering about a prerelease open beta.

[pevergreen]

Only for patches. The RTW 1.1 patch was the last one.

ETW had testing under an NDA. I was accepted into it, but they never sent me a patch/link/anything.

[CBR]

ETW had testing under an NDA. I was accepted into it, but they never sent me a patch/link/anything.

Ah OK. I was talking about the community test team that was involved with patches for the first 3 games. I know Activision also had its own testers and I remember encountering them when we doing MP tests for RTW 1.1.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

Heh thanks tomisama but i dont want to beta test sonic the hedgehog :) im sure thats the kind of thing theyre on about.
I too have in the past beta tested totalwar patches but was wondering about a prerelease open beta.

Could be fun doing Sonic Swoosh.

[AMP]

If the multiplayer is getting a lead role you'd think having a foyer would be something standard to have for people to chat while not playing. You go from having one in STW to no foyer at all yrs later, but you can watch matches and play a multi campaign... very strange and doesn't make much sense.
Most of the things people talk about what they want to see and added in is really just common sense stuff for this day and age... you shouldn't have to request a lot of these basic features to be added in the yr 2010 of gaming... which is happening at the main site.

[Gregoshi]

A hush falls over the forum as the Legendary AMP returns.

[AMP]

I wasn't Legendary really... I just played way to much after work staying up all nite battling it out against strangers until they became strangers no more and some became great friends to play with. Those were some good times I must say and a good crowd compared to others out there.

[ELITEofWARMANGINGERYBREADMEN88]

If the multiplayer is getting a lead role you'd think having a foyer would be something standard to have for people to chat while not playing. You go from having one in STW to no foyer at all yrs later, but you can watch matches and play a multi campaign... very strange and doesn't make much sense.
Most of the things people talk about what they want to see and added in is really just common sense stuff for this day and age... you shouldn't have to request a lot of these basic features to be added in the yr 2010 of gaming... which is happening at the main site.

Welcome back,legend!

[Sp00n]

I wasn't Legendary really... I just played way to much after work staying up all nite battling it out against strangers until they became strangers no more and some became great friends to play with. Those were some good times I must say and a good crowd compared to others out there.

:P I was off work for 4 months and just played Shogun solidly for that period, was a great crowd and I've struggled to find one as good in gaming since. I'd say you were key in creating a lot of the varied army types we saw, I never knew what I'd be facing when we played somthing I cant really say about Napoleon where you can pretty much guess the army each time.
I'd like to see more of the old Fears return I've seen you and NC, but where's Jst and Elmark?
Anyway nice to see so many of the old foes returning lets hope they can create a fraction of the spark of the first game.

[Kas]

Isn't it typical? A first release often the best...sequels get more bells and whistles, stunning graphics, an insane amount of key combination functions added... and the gameplay? gets worse and worse with each new version.

Sometimes it feels like they rip the heart out of it and forget what it's all about...many sequels are horrible...good looking abominations...bad jokes.
Shogun...great! Medieval...very ok. Rome...errr...that's when I quit TW.

Why so many here still have a Shogun avatar? because it was a great game! an experience many still hope to relive.

SP was lovely...MP was wonderful...not much was wrong with it. And a Foyer? of course!
A community just needs a foyer (+ other chat options)

The Shogun foyer wasn't always nice of course...idiots and bad behaving kids not something new, but it was still nice and an important community tool.

Maybe the Shogun atmosphere and awareness of the importance of decent behavior (clanmembers) helped...I dunno, but I agree with Swoosh, Tera and Apache.

I just hope CA still has an old pc with a working original Shogun on it....they should try it again...probably a refreshing experience.

Do we need to see a broken fingernail of a warrior monk when we zoom in? nope...we need great gameplay...something like we already had maybe?

[Kocmoc]

Well, the few units in STW was the key for the great balance, the gameplay was great and in no other TW game they come close to that experience. Yes, Rome was the time as many of the old player left, the gameplay and the balance was terrible. Maybe it was jsut a new game....

If you was used to STW, you did want to see something similar, that we didnt got, so we left.

40 units, 10k+ fighting on the battlefield, that sounds much better as, 12 different units and 4k fighting...
that it is very hard to or maybe impossible to balance 40+ units is no secret and never was the goal for CA, they tried to create somehow a gameplay and a certain balance, but never had a focus on how this plays in MP.

Many times, i asked myself, if some of the obvious bugs couldn't have been found in a beta?!?


Anyway, massive MP in a TW will be almost impossible, the only way is to dump the game down in many ways, go down to 2D, dont allow hilladvances or wood advances. Counter comes from unitstats, flanking and moral has no effect.

This is something we dont like to see, but this would make more player looking at MP.


Koc

[Togakure]

Going from STW MP to VI MP to Samurai Warlords mod MP really made it clear to me that fewer, well-balanced unit types with little or no upgrades is the way to go for a superior MP experience. It puts the focus back on team play and tactics; what units you take at what power level becomes more a matter of style than a requirement to win.

[Kocmoc]

i know from puzz3d, that in STW the balance within all units was around 10%, in MTW below 25% and from that time it grow more and more.

The problem you can also see right now in NTW, while the gameplay is actual quite good and you dont face many bugs, the balance is not really good.

In fact, if you want to play with a competitive setup you dont have a widespread range of options. Instead you can choose from 3-4 factions very similar setups.

There are surely 50% of units which no one is using. (if u have standard amount of gold used)


I didnt played for weeks now and im sure about how 90% of all armies are looks like.
You wont see an heavy cav army, you can only see a heavy melee units within the ottomans (or how they are called). Thats intended, thats historical maybe correct, yes. But it also limited the Setups and the possible ways to play the game.

I dont want to start a discussion about historical correctness vs gameplay/balance.

[Kocmoc]

Didn't CA used to have people from the community test the game (including MP aspects) before it was released? Up until RTW at least. I may be mistaken but I'm sure this used to be the case.

Yes, we did betatest for MI, not sure how it was with MTW. I just know that Mizus was quite active in working within the stats.


If CA is really goin for MP, than they need MPlayer, their own guys lack skills and also they need too long to find exploits or imbalances.
Im sure there are many good player out there to playtest their game and get very fast to the weak points.

I remember, that we had to sign a paper and than got a new Shogun.exe which allowed us to playtest their beta. I have no idea, if you still can do this in these times.
Invite some player to UK and test it there might be an option, i remember that AMP and me offered this back in 2002. :D

Anyway, im pretty sure, that we got tons of player, who are all interested that STW2 gets a success for the MP.

[UglyElmo2]

But have we not heard promises like that before? It always sounds like it is going to be a new MP revolution. RTW added the ability to play historical battles online and that is pretty much it when it comes to new fancy stuff even with all the hype in later titles. And then I'm not gonna mention the stuff we lost

So unless there are some real detail I'll be sitting here with my arms crossed defensive mode on...


CBR

You and me both CBR. If I remember correctly this is the first time CA admitted to not placing much time/effort into MP. By "a bit lower down the priority list", he means; "at the bottom."

I'm not sure if you were one of the ones present when the original MTW's lobby was being programmed and we were asked to test it for functionality . . . this was 3 days or so before MTW was released. :) It only got worse with RTW and has continued downhill from there. To me the lobby should be the first thing addressed, options and features next, then balance and gameplay. Patches never seem to address the lobby, options/features, only balance and gameplay, so that is why I say gameplay should be last on the list of priorities.

[Swoosh So]

Well the bar is set! the whole mp community has 1 thing at the top of their mind for multiplayer and thats a main chat lobby, not like the ones in mtw2 rome but like the one in the original shogun and mtw1 simple and effective. As soon as we hear if its shipping with one or not we will know exactly how much truth is in the MP is the focus statement. If CA keep quiet about it untill release then we can only assume there wont be one we need a statement from CA prior to release telling us what theyre adding for MP. At the moment were all stabbing in the dark for ideas if we know that a chat foyer is going to be in the game then we can start saying what we as a community would like in it - right now all our energies just focussed on getting the essential feature back in.

[LadyAnn]

The main reason I don't play N:TW anymore is the lack of the Foyer and it forces me to play pickup games with people in my zone. I would never be able to make acquaintance with 90% of people in my own clan, let alone the best players out there. Yes, you can add people to friend list (can't add to friendlist if you don't know the other person, can you?) That makes it very hard for new players to mix in.
Bring back the foyer, with effective "ignore" features (R:TW and M2:TW had defective ignore features). You may have a handful of foyers (for each zone, but I can easily go to another zone to play).
I guess game publishers don't want to take the responsibility to police the foyer. But an ignore button works marvel. Just need to test it a bit more thoroughly.

Annie

[tibilicus]

Regrettably CA is too distant from the people who play MP so I doubt the foyer will make a return, I just can't see it.

[Magyar Khan]

I have also not a good feeling when it comes to a returning foyer...... CA should do their upper best to create a community in that game..... cant their be a button be added in the game when pressed ur automatically connected to shogun2 major chatlobby or such....

[Swoosh So]

Nah magy it must be there for all, cant compromise on something so simple and important.

[Magyar Khan]

true but my feelings are bad on this..... i smell a dissapointment.... there is not a single sign pointing in that direction.... CA will use steam, CA has not a godo reputation in making good foyers and Steam is not offering enough.....

and if my feeling is right..... what do we accept as a best second?

[Swoosh So]

If theres no foyer theres no game for me at least, just my thoughts on it. I refuse to invest all my energy in a game that has no community.

[vartan]

Agreed. They might add in 1 or two new ideas, say, better MP campgain and a actual MP ladder system, but that's probably all they will do.

I'm not the philosopher of SP and MP and I'm certainly no statistician of the trends of SP and MP, whether one is gaining ground at the expense of the other, or whatnot. But what I can say is that a ladder system or any pro-active support and push of the MP community by CA is better than nothing. Great job creative director.

[AMP]

Everyone for some strange reason screams for a better AI when the fact is making an AI that can be competitive to you're average gamer in this game is next to impossible with today's tech. I don't know why they bother to beg, but they do. I'd rather play against a human player with equal footing than a buffed up AI in stats or more units just to give me a challenge.

I have a feeling too that they are just going to add one or two things and that's it.

They are gonna have steam again so the odds of a foyer diminish greatly. :(

The MP side lacks A LOT of features and information and how much will they add after all these years? Just take a look at STW MP all the way to NTW MP and look at how much has really been added over the past 10 YEARS.

I want STW2 to be great, but I'm sure it'll be lacking in many areas...

[UglyElmo2]

I want STW2 to be great, but I'm sure it'll be lacking in many areas...

Not if they decide to go to a subscription-based game, like Wow. Which would mean they would have a REASON (Monthly subscriptions) to make MP the focus, and to continually update the MP game.

As much as I abhor paying a monthly fee to play an online game, I would be willing to pay for Shogun 2 if it catered to the MP crowd and offered up continually improving features, options, and community enhancements.

Actually, I think the only way we could convince CA to even consider making MP the focus is if we can prove to them they could make a lot of profit from doing so. Monthly subscriptions might be THAT way.

I would pay $15 U.S. a month for an MP focused game, which offered clan tags, a great chat lobby with all the bells and whistles, and a continually improving game engine, and not only a battle mode, but a mega-campaign. I think CA would love to do such a thing now, but might not think there is a large enough market for it to make it profitable.

[Swoosh So]

I agree elmo it would be nice to see a totalwar thats constantly updated with new maps stat balances and new campaigns etc even for a fee. But i think CA are still a way off that theyre a completely different company from Blizzard who have massive pre release beta and alpha testing of their game before release by a large section of the community. It would be a massive shift for CA in philosophy and structure. If the blizzard community are shouting that somethings badly needed more often than not they get it. If any major exploits are found in the game theyre hotfixed within 24 hours or so. Also blizzard impliment mods that the community have created with a little modification directly into their game. I payed for wow for a good while but to be honest it was only because totalwar online degraded from rome onwards i just couldent stand to play it online. Also wow has its problems even though it makes so much money for blizzard. Some servers have a 1 hour queue to get on each night and if you want to fight a battle in battlegrounds depending on server the queue can be anywhere from 10minutes to 1 hour on some servers which is unacceptable for a game you pay monthly for and is one of the reasons i finally quit it.

Shogun2 with subscription and really well supported with a nice community with all the tools needed to keep the community going chat foyer, map editors, ca released maps every now and then units, campaigns all that would be great. But considering this is their first officially stated focus on multiplayer i think theyre miles and miles from producing a mp game that people would pay monthly for unless a hardcore fan. I mean were not even sure how much we can read into the statement, this is the big focus on multiplayer and so far we had lots of talk about ai being a huge focus and a single player campaign preview and a historical scripted battle. What id like to see from CA is some form of updates about Multiplayer, surely they can tell us if theres going to be a full chat lobby with player lists etc, i mean were all dying to know and everyones calling for it. We dont need to know all the multiplayer bells and whistles but some information on the basics would go a long way. I would really love to see a staff member for CA in a preview vid saying the community wanted it back so were giving it back ( chat lobby ) and theyre going to make sure the game ships with really well tested multiplayer maps and remaking the shogun classic maps that everyone loved so much, even throwing in a map editor or/and magys campaign map selection idea. These wouldent be big announcements in ca's mind i think but for the community these are the issues that count above all else.

Im rambling now off to bed!