Multiplayer is the future

[d6veteran]

Consider this. The fact that the RTW online battle component is basically crap, really speaks to how far they are from developing the next step in TW multiplayer - online campaign games.

Here's a quote from a fellow gamer in my clan:

One of these days, publishers and developers will realize games are all about the mp no matter what.

Yes you want a solid kick a** sp experience, but unless you can crush your friends, the game isn't played after the shine wears off.

Longevity = more revenue through expansions and franchises = good MP

I still can't believe they haven't put in at least a 2-4 player online campaign...that can be saved.

If the game had that -- this game would be played forever.

I think he pretty much nailed it, and obviously I agree completely.

In the dev chats they keep saying that no one would play an online campaign game since the turns would take to long and all this other stuff. They are seriously underestimating the desire for players to endure some really minor gameplay issues in order to have a persistent battle online with their friends. To me that is Mt. Everest. That is where all these strategy games should be striving for.

Multiplayer is the future.

I had this great thought the other night ...

It would be awesome if while playing your single player campaign, whenever a conflict initiated battle mode, you had THREE options for resolving the battle.

1) fight battle
2) automatically resolve battle
3) fight battle online

This would adress the AI problems. And at least provide an interim step to an online campaign game.

And this is not a tech challenge. Option 3 would simply log you into GameSpy and host the appropriate battle. If one army attacked you then there would be a slot for 1 player. If multiple armies attacked you then you would have slots for additional players. Think of how cool that would be! I would love to join someone's campaign battle and give them a real fight!

You'd get veteran generals and noob generals. It would be cool. It would be challenging and it would really make you think before you send those 500 Romans against those 1100 Gauls

I'd invade Seleucid and get my firend who loves that faction to join my passworded battles so that he'd be my Seleucid tactical opponent. How cool would that be?

So, assuming that CA could have (read *should* have) delivered at least an RTW online component of equal value to MTW current (patched) online component ... don't you think they should have raised the bar a bit and therefore included something like I've just suggested?

My point: why develop ground breaking single player gameplay and yet in that very same game choose not to do anything ground breaking with the multiplayer, and in reality take several steps back?

And ... why no response from CA? They've received (and applauded) their deserved kudos for such a great single player game, yet nothing to say to their fans about why the mp is so broken or when they can expect to have it fixed.

[Colovion]

Wow great idea! but it may be kind of annoying for some players if they click "play online" and no one is there to join their games. Sure - if it happened it would be sweeeet - and I'm sure that people online looking for games are going to do anything possible to play a game - even if they are a meagre army against a formidable force - they would most likely do the thing that a small force would do - even withdrawing off the battlefield with the majority of the troops and screen the enemy with some, thinking of the big picture they can't see (unless that feature was incorporated). The opponent online can have a brief overview of the big campaign map to get a feel of what kind of battle this is and then go into it. This idea obviously makes for some frusterations where the opponent could just do annoying things to piss you off with no semblance of a strategy - in which case you as the host have an option to "Boot player/Switch to AI Opponent".

:D

I also agree that without MP the game dies as soon as the peopel finish the MP or the game's features and graphics get outdated.

Why do you think Starcraft, Halflife and such games are so impressively STILL played these days? It's certainly not their graphics. It's their online ability to make great MP battles with nearly flawless gameplay balance. Without online battles FPS would never have been as abundant as they are today.

[shingenmitch2]

cool yes, but a pipe dream as of now.
Lets just get back the MP we had and fix the play issues

[d6veteran]

I was thinking some more about it and actually I've played a game that had this very feature - Close Combat!

At least I am sure the Close Combat V would allow you to play a campaign and host all your battles for an online player to chair as the AI. It was great. Solved the AI issues and made the game a challenge. There was a lobby on game spy were you'd go and you could be pretty sure to keep the smacktards away.

Anyway ... to put this into perspective, Close Combat V was released like 6 years ago. So this type of feature is nothing *new*.

[ElmarkOFear]

Actually, time would not be a factor for RTW. The players would have plenty of time to make their moves while waiting to logon to the RTW lobby and then have even more time to make their next moves while they waited for a game to actually launch without dropping everyone. :) If we endure all of the time waiting to play just one fast MP game, then I can see a lot of these same people willing to wait around and play a long MP campaign game. hehe

[d6veteran]

ROTFL!

Nice Elmark!

[RTKLamorak]

v funny elmo, but once the reality of it sinks in it makes me sad :(

[ElmarkOFear]

It's either laugh or cry . . . . I am going to hire a comedian to do my Eulogy: Then people will remember my funeral and cry, not from sadness, but from remembering the last laugh I gave them before I was laid to rest.

I am 42 years of age, been hit by a forklift, had a heart attack, been hit by 480 Volts of electricity and have lived to tell about it . . . I am sure my nine lives have been used up by now . . It's just a matter of time . .

****ELMO looks around, sees wife looking strangely at him, decides its a good night for a bout with insomnia!****


hehe wooohooo!

[Colovion]

Be careful when you drink your coffee tomorrow.

Les Poisanus

[Voigtkampf]

My point: why develop ground breaking single player gameplay and yet in that very same game choose not to do anything ground breaking with the multiplayer, and in reality take several steps back?

As soon as I play MP, and don't like it (high probability), I’ll consider this to become my sig!

ElmarkOFear-sama, you are just simply a must-have! I salute you! It will be a disgrace if we never get to play the Rome we want to have against each other just the way we would like to play it, right?

[TonkaToys]

Consider this. The fact that the RTW online battle component is basically crap, really speaks to how far they are from developing the next step in TW multiplayer - online campaign games.
...

In the dev chats they keep saying that no one would play an online campaign game since the turns would take to long and all this other stuff. They are seriously underestimating the desire for players to endure some really minor gameplay issues in order to have a persistent battle online with their friends.
...

It would be awesome if while playing your single player campaign, whenever a conflict initiated battle mode, you had THREE options for resolving the battle.

1) fight battle
2) automatically resolve battle
3) fight battle online
...

Some of you guys must have seen this before, but I am trying to develop an online campaign system... hard work though and real life keeps getting in the way.

See my sig for more info, inc. a demo.

[hellenes]

Consider this. The fact that the RTW online battle component is basically crap, really speaks to how far they are from developing the next step in TW multiplayer - online campaign games.

Here's a quote from a fellow gamer in my clan:



I think he pretty much nailed it, and obviously I agree completely.

In the dev chats they keep saying that no one would play an online campaign game since the turns would take to long and all this other stuff. They are seriously underestimating the desire for players to endure some really minor gameplay issues in order to have a persistent battle online with their friends. To me that is Mt. Everest. That is where all these strategy games should be striving for.

Multiplayer is the future.

I had this great thought the other night ...

It would be awesome if while playing your single player campaign, whenever a conflict initiated battle mode, you had THREE options for resolving the battle.

1) fight battle
2) automatically resolve battle
3) fight battle online

This would adress the AI problems. And at least provide an interim step to an online campaign game.

And this is not a tech challenge. Option 3 would simply log you into GameSpy and host the appropriate battle. If one army attacked you then there would be a slot for 1 player. If multiple armies attacked you then you would have slots for additional players. Think of how cool that would be! I would love to join someone's campaign battle and give them a real fight!

You'd get veteran generals and noob generals. It would be cool. It would be challenging and it would really make you think before you send those 500 Romans against those 1100 Gauls

I'd invade Seleucid and get my firend who loves that faction to join my passworded battles so that he'd be my Seleucid tactical opponent. How cool would that be?

So, assuming that CA could have (read *should* have) delivered at least an RTW online component of equal value to MTW current (patched) online component ... don't you think they should have raised the bar a bit and therefore included something like I've just suggested?

My point: why develop ground breaking single player gameplay and yet in that very same game choose not to do anything ground breaking with the multiplayer, and in reality take several steps back?

And ... why no response from CA? They've received (and applauded) their deserved kudos for such a great single player game, yet nothing to say to their fans about why the mp is so broken or when they can expect to have it fixed.

The ONLY thing that i have to add is that the games with weak multiplayer loose money from PIRACY...Single player games cant fight it since the CD key is not worth anything if the MP is weak...If you can read russian and visit some ru tw sites you will see how much of the RTW has been downloaded via emule/bought illegal copies...In greece the piracy is being fought but its still a MAIJOR part of the PC games...The common thought of any south/eastern european gamer is:well what i want to play MP or SP? SP? then ill pay 5 euros for the illegal copy and play it...You just have to see what happened with Blizzards WarCraft III ANY internet Cafe in greece that has it has the 100% LEGAL copy NOT because they cant have the illegal BUT because they CANT provide Battlenet feature without the legal copy...And as long as the CA/Activision dont provide a MP campaign no matter how good/stable the current BIZZARE (yes it is because all that player want to build armies in mp) for the common RTS players MP gets they will see themselves behind Blizzard,EA etc(note The battle for Middle earth)...

PS An older post of mine at the .COM
the whole hosting-quitting-dropping etc etc is a NO for a MP campaign wich will have to be a single grand campaign going online with commanders and subcommanders taking their place if one drops-quits-disconnects also its a TURN BASED campaign so one leaving on the camp map wont cause many probs since the option of the replacements could be relieving...
Second the MP campaign isnt vital FOR the "staggering numbers" of the users online its inorther TO HAVE stagerring numbers....The present online part of the game looks bizzare and awkward to the other (note:majority) RTS ers the whole bre battle selection and lack of strategy (yes the TW series are TBS-Turn Based Strategy+RTT-Real Time Tactical games) with only the RTT part online has only a small potential to draw the other Strategy gamers off the resources gathering-click-fiestas RTSes....The low level of the Programmed Oponnent makes the boredom unbearable in the later stages of the game as the lack of the diplomacy (there is NO diplomacy with a PO)....
My feeling of the present MP is that the sterilised and artificial battles drew away all the feeling that i had from the first contact with the game in sp.
The "mirror" like laboratory flat battles with ideal "non benefiting/giving advantage" sterile enviroments made the all thing pointless in a way.
Although remarcable the exeptions of the above majority fought in hilly desert and other enviroments battles couldnt take away the tasteless feeling and smell of drugstore of the whole process.
However as it goes if you dont have smthing u are forced to live with what you have so the sterile enviroment keeps its existance and the community after the disdain of the CA to the idea of creation of an MP campaign remains IMHO prisoner of the sterilised encounters...

[GilJaysmith]

Read this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20...rdell_01.shtml

(you'll need to register at GamaSutra, but this is free)

This is the postmortem for "The Political Machine", the most recent game from Stardock. Stardock has been cited on these boards as being very responsive to the customer, looking to the future, and so forth. However, this is what their President said about the multiplayer in that game:

"Multiplayer. The biggest regret I have, in hindsight, was the decision to have a multiplayer mode in The Political Machine. The game features a full-blown matchmaking service, in order to make it relatively easy to play multiplayer. I love playing games multiplayer, and I've played a lot of games online with people. That said, based on the sales statistics, and based on the server stats, less than 1% of players are playing the game multiplayer."

"As a gamer, I demand multiplayer in my games. It affects my purchasing decisions. But as a game developer, I recognize that people like me are an extreme minority. Outside of a handful of games, most games don't reach critical mass in online players to make a successful multiplayer community. We would have been much better off putting that time into enhancing the single player game."

Any opinions?

[Alrowan]

MP will only ever remain a small minority if devs dont give it any priority, and improve the situation.

in game where MP is given decent priority (not just some obscure game) like WC3 for example, here we see the vast numbers that play it online.

I think you will find that games that are popular, with well supported MP, see the MP side as a huge success, popular games where devs dont take much consideration to MP, the MP only remains mediocre.

[hellenes]

Read this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20...rdell_01.shtml

(you'll need to register at GamaSutra, but this is free)

This is the postmortem for "The Political Machine", the most recent game from Stardock. Stardock has been cited on these boards as being very responsive to the customer, looking to the future, and so forth. However, this is what their President said about the multiplayer in that game:

"Multiplayer. The biggest regret I have, in hindsight, was the decision to have a multiplayer mode in The Political Machine. The game features a full-blown matchmaking service, in order to make it relatively easy to play multiplayer. I love playing games multiplayer, and I've played a lot of games online with people. That said, based on the sales statistics, and based on the server stats, less than 1% of players are playing the game multiplayer."

"As a gamer, I demand multiplayer in my games. It affects my purchasing decisions. But as a game developer, I recognize that people like me are an extreme minority. Outside of a handful of games, most games don't reach critical mass in online players to make a successful multiplayer community. We would have been much better off putting that time into enhancing the single player game."

Any opinions?

Gil as i see the example of Blizzards HUGE succes in MP with WarCraft Starcraft series had NO impact at all on CA... :(
And as ive read in your previous posts on Piracy and nocd loaders you dont like piracy BUT if you want to fight piracy make MP!!!
And IMHO Blizzard didnt emphasize or improve MP to please the customers they did it because that would AND DID insure that all the customers were FORCED to buy a legitimate copy in orther to enjoy the game...
So if CA/Activision want to sell their game to the HUGE market that other companies enjoy just pay attention to opinions like:

I had my mouth SHUT after me trying to agitate RTW in a greek warcraft forum...
The reason?: "To Medieval eixe plaka se single player, alla ousiastika eixe aniparkto multiplayer giati ka8e "game" i8ele meres na teleiwsei, kai opws kai na to kanoume online fainetai i axia tou RTS. Kai to Rome apo oti fainetai de 8a exei kai polles diafores oson afora to gameplay apo to Medieval, opote.."

Translation: "The Medieval was fun in single player, but virtually had non existing multiplayer because each "game" needed days to be finished, and at all events the value of the RTS is shown online. And Rome as it seems wont have many differences as the gameplay is oncerned to Medieval, so..."
The link: www.warcraft.gr/forum.asp...1869.m1157

Hellenes

[Puzz3D]

I like the game for the tactical battles, and I think MP Total War could be quite successful if the tactical battles were brought to their full potential. In the single player campaign, the idea is to enter into the strategically important battles with the better general or with more troops. In multiplayer, you can't get those advantages, so you have to win with superior tactics. I've played both SP and MP in each of the Total War games, and I can definitely say that the thrill of winning a great battle in MP far exceeds anything I ever encounted in SP. I'm not sure that CA needs a multiplayer campaign, but I think they should try to maintain and improve the tactical quality of the battles with each installment of the game. That aspect has declined badly in RTW.

[d6veteran]

Gil, I'm sure that you're aware that the opinion expressed in that post mortem is not a one size fits all for the video game industry. A badly implemented multiplayer or a multiplayer that largely does not suit the audience is most definitely going to reap that type of sour grapes in a post mortem. But it is simply not true that multiplayer is the minority "outside of a handful of game"! I find that comment absurd. I can't think of a single friend or co-worker who plays video games who is *not* interested in getting online and playing with others.

Online gaming is a booming industry. All you have to do is look at the subscription market to see examples of just how much player will dish out over the course of months and in some cases years, to play online. Nevermind the boom in 'gaming' broadband packages.

TW has focused on Single Player and honestly I cannot say how much more profit/sales would be obtained per additional development resources put into the multiplayer component. I think that would depend on what and how multiplayer features were implemented.

Multiplayer is the future of gaming -- I have no doubt when I make that statement. Multiplayer addresses the AI hurdle. Multiplayer recycles gameplay (I can speak of at least 5 friends I convinced to buy MTW just last year because I was still enjoying it online ... without an online component I would have been done with the game and never had the opportunity to recommend it so far down the road). Multiplayer allows people to connect and play games together throughout the world. Minority? Bah!

CA has some choices to make and I don't necessarily think it is obvious to make multiplayer the ugly step child of TW. The single player game speaks to the talent, care and innovation available from the development team and I personally think that if some of that talent was shared and supported in the multiplayer component you'd reap the benefits financially.

Everyone I know that plays TW would like some degree of a multiplayer experience grafted onto the single player experience. Everyone I know that has been waiting two years for RTW was shocked to some degree that there wasn't only more meat in the multiplayer but that it was such a beta experience.

[Dionysus9]

Read this:

"Multiplayer. The biggest regret I have, in hindsight, was the decision to have a multiplayer mode in The Political Machine. The game features a full-blown matchmaking service, in order to make it relatively easy to play multiplayer. I love playing games multiplayer, and I've played a lot of games online with people. That said, based on the sales statistics, and based on the server stats, less than 1% of players are playing the game multiplayer."



Any opinions?

What are your opinions on this point, Gil? All we can assume is that you agree with the above statements since that has consistently been CA's position and the point has been consistently raised again and again. I take this to be your position--please correct me if I'm wrong.

I have many. First of all, I'm tired of being told that my opinion doesn't really matter because I'm in the minority. Maybe that is an illogical emotional response, but its my knee-jerk response all the same. CA's position has been, and apparently still is -- MP is not worth developing or supporting. Sure, you'll take my $50, but thats where the relationship ends. Fine. We are used to it by now.

I'm so sick of this 1% argument I could scream. How bout someone come out with a game with NO single player mode? eh? Then we wouldn't have to hear this damn argument after every buggy release. The peace of not having to hear how much of a voiceless minority I am (or should be) would be worth paying any price for good MP support. Thats where the untapped market share is.

Secondly, if TW didn't have multiplayer--I'd be playing chess or poker and CA wouldn't have any bit of my $200 some-odd-dollars I've spent on TW in the last few years. And I'll bet that is the same response you'll get from several hundred other players--if not here, then certainly at the .net. CA knows this, which is why you give us what you consider the minimum necessary to keep us paying.

Third, defeatism is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and btw--I've never even heard of this game you are referring to, which suggests the MP side sucked or I would have heard about it. Maybe the SP was good, but I don't play SP games so I wouldn't know. MP spreads by word of mouth, if it sucks, it goes nowhere. Players who like MP experiences talk to eachother and share new "gems" of games and also share bad experiences with games. It doesn't take long for a good MP game to build up a following and a momentum. Also, you can't make UNO (the card game) have a good MP following--the underlying game has to be good. The MP implementation has to be focused. The company has to set a GOAL of having good MP.

Have you ever played a team sport where your morale was really low? "We're going to lose this game, we're going to lose...they're going to destroy us." Its a self-fulfilling prophecy--every time. If you think you will lose, you will. You have to believe that you can win before you have a chance to win.

In this case, CA wrote off MP before Shogun was ever released. Is it any surprise to anyone that MP is and always has been riddled with problems? If half the MP community that left when MTW came out was still around, we'd have 500 signatures on the petition. Those people were chased away by poor MP implementation and support a long time ago. If you want to go further back to the Shogun release and the MP problems that surrounded that-- we are talking about another 300 or so people who could still be part of this community if the initial Shogun release was not flawed in MP.

Look at games like WCIII, and Unreal Tournament-- are you telling me that MP is only 1% of their sales? NO WAY thats true! Those games are primarily MP games why? Because they FOCUS on MP, and guess what-- their MP sales increase. Is that so surprising?

Fourth, I'll tell you a way to guarantee that your MP sales never increase beyond 1%-- introduce an MP mode that is incomplete, poorly supported, and buggy. That way you can sell lots of copies to MP hopefuls and then when you tell then they are only 1% you will be correct, since the MP side of the game will never flourish. This is the strategy I think CA has employed-- rope-a-dope the MP fiends and then pocket their money and tell them they are a minority who has (or should have) no voice.

Fifth, TW SP is maxed out. You can't really do much more with the strategy map in my opinion-- the future is the battles, and MP ones at that. The AI is limited (look, Kasparov can still beat Big Blue). If I wanted to play strategy map, I'd play CIV III or something. TW is different because of the battles--why is CA de-emphasising that? To "fit in" with the other big titles? Wake up--you can't take their market share, you have to create your own niche.

Sixth, if MP is such a headache and such a drain on R&D, then why does CA include it? Even more frustrating-- why has CA been essentially complaining about MP players being less than 1% from day ONE when they could have gone forward with an SP only game? I think its because they know they HAVE to have MP to be competitive--see my 4th point.

Seventh, I'm tired of this same old discussion. If CA wants to take our money and give us a half-assed MP product-- fine. Just do it and stop rubbing it in--it really gets me mad when I'm told my $50 isn't as good as the next guy's because of the portion of the game that I play.

I guess what Gil is saying is that we are 1% of sales so they allocated 1% of development funds to us. Ok, that is a facially logical marketing decision. I think its self-defeatist, short sighted, and flawed in the long term--but its what we have, so enough said.

Or as Bomil would say-- enough words lost.

[d6veteran]

Well put Dionysus9!

I specifically want to comment on:

Fifth, TW SP is maxed out. You can't really do much more with the strategy map in my opinion-- the future is the battles, and MP ones at that. The AI is limited (look, Kasparov can still beat Big Blue). If I wanted to play strategy map, I'd play CIV III or something. TW is different because of the battles--why is CA de-emphasising that? To "fit in" with the other big titles? Wake up--you can't take their market share, you have to create your own niche.

The RTW single player game is great *despite* the enemy AI. Even the stellar reviews for RTW comment on this directly or indirectly. Further enhancing the AI through compensation (numbers and strength) is transparent.

There is a great opportunity to truly do something new in TWs market space and create gameplay that addresses the AI limitations.

Polishing the Multiplayer is a step, but a bigger step (and more rewarding for both sides) would be to start plugging the multiplayer into the strategy/single player experience.

I've mentioned before the idea of having an additional option when going into battle mode from the single player game: 'Fight Online'. This would host your current battle online for other players to join. Pathing and AI issues solved and for perhaps less R&D dollars that would yield something close to a human opponent. You make the single player game stronger, you make the multiplayer community larger and you surely break some ground and create a bigger niche.

[note: I make no claims to this idea if it is used]

Just consider the attributes of this gameplay:

The player would have the option to password the game so a specific friend could join to take control of the enemy. Or just anyone from the online community could join and you could get a tough general or a weak one -- part of the fog of war.

Battles with reinforcements would mean more seats for players to join. The coordination of reinforcements could be thrilling compared to what the AI does. Think of having a human controlling one of your allied reinforcements.

I think this would be stellar!

A similar thing was done with the Close Combat series and I played both with passworded games and open. I would never have to wait long for someone to join the open games. In the event you got a smacktard you would be able to boot them and rehost.

Something like this idea is what I expect CA to be working on. I expected this type of effort for RTW frankly.

[Dionysus9]

d6,

the problem is they are still stuck in this 1% paradigm. Why would they ever expend effort to mesh the SP and MP sides when, at best, they would only be appealing to less than 1% of their customers? You see? Its self-defeatest in the extreme--but that is what we are up against. Every time we have a problem or suggestion the response is the same-- "sorry, MP accounts for less than 1% of sales"

you can come up with a thousands brilliant ideas, ideas that would launch TW into the thick of the MP gaming world--but until CA sees value in implementing those ideas we will not see anything become of them. The problem is not the lack of ideas, the problem is the anti-MP bias that is being slavishly clung to by most of the industry.

Take Gil's example-- the stardock president blames the failure on MP.

Someone stole your car and got your wife pregnant? Must have been MP. Those damn minorities sure are trouble. MP moved in next door? Doh! There goes the neighborhood. lol. Any evil, anywhere, must be caused by MP. You must admit it is a convenient scape-goat-- especially when all the other grizzled executives nod sagely in agreement.

This is an industry wide self-fulfilling paradigm that we cannot change. It appears to be shifting slowly, but until MP becomes the focus for the major distributors (activision/ea), we wont see any change.

[d6veteran]

I have hope that someone over at CA is not falling into this 1% myth.

I mean Activision distributes Call of Duty. There is a game that shows how brilliance can be infused into both the single player and multiplayer! CoD and the recent expansion made great strides in both single and multi player gameplay. That game is a success.

I'm trying to still have hope. The reality is ... if CA doesn't start shifting resources quickly into the multiplayer space then some other developer will. They'll take everything that CA learned from the single player over the years and then add on a robust multiplayer component that bridges to the single player component in some way.

I have no doubt that if CA doesn't do it someone else will.

I just did some research on that game "Political Maching". It's funny ... if CA, the makers of the TW legacy, are taking lessons from those guys ... well ... I don't know what to say! :D

Someone stole your car and got your wife pregnant? Must have been MP. Those damn minorities sure are trouble. MP moved in next door? Doh! There goes the neighborhood. lol. Any evil, anywhere, must be caused by MP. You must admit it is a convenient scape-goat-- especially when all the other grizzled executives nod sagely in agreement.

Funny stuff by the way! Gave me a good chuckle at work.

[SouthwaterPanda]

I had thought that people here would have some grasp of reality; however, all I see are pipe dreams and piping dreamers...

d6veteran: I posted the link to the Stardock postmortem as something I read today which was interesting to me, not because it specifically informs CA's policy or because we take our lead from Stardock. So much for my referring to them on the basis that some people here have liked their games.

Dionysus9: I'm sorry, but your rant about "blame MP" is misguided at best. That quote was from the manager of that project, talking about where he saw resources expended in the project, and about what he would have done differently. To say that he's blaming MP because the game didn't do well is pretty daft, regardless of whether it got a cheap laugh from the crowd. He *knows* that only 1% of the purchasers of the game have tried playing MP. It *turns out* that investing so much time in MP was not profitable. He's not justifying a decision to not invest time in MP; he's regretting making the decision to have invested so much, given the number of people that it's benefited compared to the number of people who would have benefited from the time going somewhere else.

A couple other things:

Everyone keeps banging on about Blizzard as the paradigm for MP success. I think you need to consider that there are plenty, plenty more companies which have attempted to emulate Blizzard and failed. I would expect that CA has no interest in massively failing at MP, especially since we have our own stats about MP usage which suggest that 1% is a pretty good estimate of the size of the market. (We know exactly how many CD keys have been used to log into GameSpy for Medieval, for example. Doesn't tell us the size of the LAN market, but then nothing would.)

In short, everyone keeps saying that we would make a fortune if we "took MP seriously", and wailing that until we believe that there's more than 1% of you out there, we're waving goodbye to a fortune. But it isn't your money and your jobs on the line if you're wrong, is it? CA has made enough money to stay in business making predominantly-SP games. In fact, most games companies stay in business that way, with what you would call mediocre online support, or none at all. The number of *good* MP games is pretty minuscule. On the other hand, I could name you plenty of games which have delivered astoundingly good content, including a viable multiplayer component, which have achieved no great MP impact, and seen the developer go bankrupt regardless. (Who here played Startopia - multiplayer or otherwise? How many MP games of Emperor have I ever seen running? Majesty? Stronghold?)

Come on, be honest. Name all these successful multiplayer games. When you say that, what you mean is the Blizzard line, Counter-Strike, AoE, the Quakes and a few Quake-powered FPSs, UT, and some (nowhere near all) MMORPGs. That's about it.

In other words, FPSs and RTSs. Games you can pick up and play immediately. Genres which have been around for a decade.

Tell me why we should take any risks without a great deal of care and attention and investigation *and some numbers to back it up*.

[CBR]

Well to be honest I dont think MP campaign is worth it. Yes it would be nice to have but would it be worth the effort?

How many people play Civ online? Spartans made 1v1 campaign available IIRC but dont know how much that online option is used. Games like that are the ones we have to compare with for Total War.

What Im disappointed with is how the current MP part of Total War is kept down with bugs and missing features. It doesnt feel like its moving forward at all. Sure we got a few new features in and thats great but from a player point of view it seems like we lost a few features and got a few bugs for each feature added.


CBR

[baz]

I used to play stronghold with the rest of my old clan .. oh the memories ;)

By the way, i can see your point Panda/Gil that 1% is probably a good estimate of the online contingent, probably less .. However, you guys that have made this game, obviouisly have a great standard of coding, because of this is it not your goal to produce an app that you are personally proud to be associated with? one that people say to you "great job, well done, best in the business"?

In other words does it not frustrate you that you are not given the resources to change this trend, is it not frustrating to see this oppurtunity go by without you being able to release the games full potential?

Do you work like a robot 9-5 like most of us, without persoanl satisfaction?

Do Developers not have pipe dreams too? ;)

EDIT: I dont think a MP campaign is worth it either, what is worth it is making it possible for us to have features that make it possible for us to make it! No offence but it is hard enough accepting some decision that have been made for 3d battles let alone a campaign too ;)

i.e. loading half beaten armies

[Tamur]

Looking in from outside the MP community, I can see that a lot of the comments being made are simply reactions to a disappointment that the MP niche wasn't more the focus of development. This thread has been a bit surprising to follow --- I really hope that MP is not the future of gaming.

Why? Because I value innovation -- it's what brought me to Shogun -- and innovation simply does not succeed in multiplayer gaming. "Evolution not revolution" is the phrase you hear large MP/MMO design teams quoting over and over.

Consider Uru and A Tale In the Desert. One dead, one living, both very interesting concepts. ATITD is a fun game, but the degree to which ATITD has succeeded wouldn't float even a medium-sized development team, let alone marketing, testing, admin, etc etc.

[FearZeus]

There are now over 300 people on the list, as I said I speak for 300 plus people who play MP!
This game is full of bugs and lag which makes this game unplayable, if this is CA's way forward I wish them every success and bid farewell. I have better things in which to spend my time other than be accused of ranting by someone under CA's supervision which coincidently just happens to be the company that has taken my money for the last 5 years or so.

Do yourselves a favour CA, listen to what YOUR customers are asking for! that way you will have a much more profitable business, have you guys ever heard of the customer is always right? I rest my case!

[SouthwaterPanda]

Of course we do. That's why (sob story) it hurts so much when people who have no idea what we go through to produce a game that's pretty much a work of genius declare that we're mental incompetents, paperboys, monkey typists, and so forth. Developers are human too. Boo hoo, etc. It annoys anyone who can't do everything to their heart's content, if they can't also be realistic about things and say, "We've done something that no-one else has done, and we did it as best we could under the circumstances." There are things in Rome which no other game does. Bugs are fixable, but lack of genius isn't. You can't patch a game to make it a work of genius. Rome is, basically, a work of genius. That's why it's winning all these rapturous reviews - not because we've supplied concubines to the review editors or donated $1,000,000 to GameStar or whatever, but because those people, who've seen a lot of games, really rate Total War in general and this in particular.

That dichotomy - of feeling that they've done a good job under difficult circumstances, but also feeling sympathy with anyone who finds a bug in a game - is almost certainly why a lot of CA's programmers don't stop by these boards. It can be almost physically painful to read complete strangers insulting us individually or collectively because they happen to have found a bug (or a feature they don't like, or a historical inaccuracy, or whatever). Anyone whose advice is "get a tougher skin" should try investing two years of their life in a creative endeavour and then ask fifty complete strangers to tell them it's shit...

[Armchair Athlete]

I can understand when some of the developers get a bit riled up when people come here saying RTW IS T3H SUXX0R!!!!!! but I just hope you don't think the actions of some are reflective of the thoughts of all the people on this board. If some one is happy with the game, they are hardly going to post a million threads saying "RTW rules!!!!" By nature it is those that are unhappy with the game that will post and complain, while those that are happy with it will be too busy playing The majority of the people on this board are very appreciative at the extraordinary effort you guys at CA have done to supply us with a game with will almost undoubtly take out strategy game of the year, and a defiate contender for game of the year. I am sure even those that complain are apprecieative of the effort gone ito it, its because they like it so much they want some issues they feel could be improved to do so. Now that is not to say that it is totally perfect, obviously there will be some small issues with bugs and something that does not seem right but that will always be the case with any major venture. Just out of curiosity, how is RTW selling for you guys? I am a member of several other sites (mostly FPS games) and there is a suprising amount of people there who have the game (and love it!). Unusual, as most of this crowd is like "OMG STAREGIE SUXXXXSSS!!111. If you want to read some good comments, I can give you the links I know you can't post figures, but just a worse than expected, better than expected or on target will do? And one more question I have being dying to ask someone from CA, now seems as good as time as ever, do you guys play some of the mods that are made?

[Dionysus9]

Gil,

Piping dreamers? Come now, you have stooped to our level, at best--calling names like that. That's just offensive and it does nothing to advance the arguments on either side.

I don't want to start a flamewar here as it is unproductive, but I have to respond to your comments. Let me say I respect you more than anyone in the entire CA corporation because you have the cajones to come here and listen to us, talk with us, and from time to time to stand up to us--from what I understand on your own time off the clock which is quite commendable and I've always thought well of you for it. You are the only person at CA that I can count on to listen to me, and only because you personally want to hear--so I really do appreciate that and I appreciate your opinions to.

You hit a raw nerve with the 1% reference, and you are still poking at it. If there is one thing that makes me mad its this much-touted "less than 1%" justification for all the problems in MP. I've been around for long enough to have heard it every time we voice our valid concerns (e.g. with the release of MTW v1.0). In fact, maybe I should just stop complaining about it and accept that whenever CA rolls out the "less than 1%" remark they are really on the defensive for a change and maybe it means stuff will get fixed.

I spend good money on your games and my opinion should be worth as much as any other customer, no matter what "segment" I'm in. If you want to justify poor service to one segment or another, I'd prefer you keep it to yourself or tell us up-front what your position is (preferably before we spend our money).

With all due respect-- what is your personal opinion on this issue 1%? You've asked us what ours is, and we've answered. Now how about yours?

Do you come here just to jab us in the ribs by reminding us that not only CA but the industry at large considers us (and everything we value as MP afficianados) to be of less value than other paying customers? I think not, but with the piping dreamers reference it almost feels like it. This is a sensitive topic for me--the most sensitive topic related to the TW series of games, actually (for me at least).

Let me get to the point-- I knew you would neither embrace nor reject the 1% position based on the way you raised it-- pointing to another unrelated thread somewhere, by someone else, involving some other game. But you see, that position has been advanced time and time again by CA in response to our valid concerns over bugs. In your response (above), you talk out of both sides of your mouth--on one hand you say that it is not CA's position and then you immediately offer the much-touted statistical evidence which CA "has" that justifies that same position.

Which is it? What is your personal opinion? What is CA's official position?

Is it or is it not CA's position that less than 1% of TW sales are driven by MP players?

Are you here just to ask questions without offering your own opinion? Is this a crashcourse in the Socratic method? lol. I'm sorry I went for the cheap laughs-- you got me there. And frankly, I don't know squat about the stardock game or its executives, or the reasons why it failed. I don't know if the MP side of that game was great or not.

Yes, we have the luxury of dreaming about how great R:TW could be-- you have the unenviable task of trying to get us there. But when we are told (directly or indirectly) that our opinions as a community can essentially be ignored--that is going to make us defensive.

Dionysus9: . . . .he's regretting making the decision to have invested so much, given the number of people that it's benefited compared to the number of people who would have benefited from the time going somewhere else.

A couple other things:

Everyone keeps banging on about Blizzard as the paradigm for MP success. I think you need to consider that there are plenty, plenty more companies which have attempted to emulate Blizzard and failed. I would expect that CA has no interest in massively failing at MP, especially since we have our own stats about MP usage which suggest that 1% is a pretty good estimate of the size of the market. (We know exactly how many CD keys have been used to log into GameSpy for Medieval, for example. Doesn't tell us the size of the LAN market, but then nothing would.)

In short, everyone keeps saying that we would make a fortune if we "took MP seriously", and wailing that until we believe that there's more than 1% of you out there, we're waving goodbye to a fortune. But it isn't your money and your jobs on the line if you're wrong, is it? CA has made enough money to stay in business making predominantly-SP games. In fact, most games companies stay in business that way, with what you would call mediocre online support, or none at all. The number of *good* MP games is pretty minuscule. On the other hand, I could name you plenty of games which have delivered astoundingly good content, including a viable multiplayer component, which have achieved no great MP impact, and seen the developer go bankrupt regardless. (Who here played Startopia - multiplayer or otherwise? How many MP games of Emperor have I ever seen running? Majesty? Stronghold?)

Come on, be honest. Name all these successful multiplayer games. When you say that, what you mean is the Blizzard line, Counter-Strike, AoE, the Quakes and a few Quake-powered FPSs, UT, and some (nowhere near all) MMORPGs. That's about it.

In other words, FPSs and RTSs. Games you can pick up and play immediately. Genres which have been around for a decade.

Tell me why we should take any risks without a great deal of care and attention and investigation *and some numbers to back it up*.

Actually thats all we ever asked for was some care, attention, and investigation (like beta testing). But I'm taking another semantic cheap shoap shot--so I won't go further down that road.

I suppose your "statistics" don't include the hundreds upon hundreds (if not thousands) of people who crashed to desktop when they first tried to logon to MP and either gave up or returned the game? I suppose your stats dont include people who couldn't get their CD Key to work? Or what about all the people that were alienated by the lack of MP support (and the plethora of bugs) in the STW and MTW releases-- good solid players who swore never to purchase another EA or CA game again. (Do you remember the massive server crashes and downtime of STW, and all the veterans who left over that? I do). And of course you admit they arent including the LAN players (who in many countries outnumber the online players).

But even so, lets take this 1% stat as the gospel truth--and also assume that no amount of MP support or development will ever increase that percentage to beyond 2%. Is that fair enough? is that too much of an assumption?

If that is true, then why would CA continue to offer an MP side? Just for that 1% bump in sales? Does that make sense? Maybe. If it does make fiscal sense to spend money on MP to gain a 1% bump in sales, then doesn't it also make sense to spend twice as much and hope to gain a 2% bump in sales?

But we never see the increased effort, and so you will never see the increase sales. And then you offer the same old stats to us as justification for not making the effort to begin with? I suggest that the fact that you STILL have 1% MP participation after all the bugs in every release of TW indicates you could have easily grown the MP portion to 2% or 3%.

So maybe you can help us understand why it makes sense for CA to half-ass MP in order to get a 1% increase in sales, while it does not make sense to double your effort to see double the increase in sales?

By the way--these games you suggest were great and that had great MP content that failed, I've not played any of them except Stronghold. I bought Stronghold at the same time I bought STW (I think I bought them both the same day) and I played it for 10 minutes and its sat in my computer desk for 3 years since then. I think I paid $39.95 for stronghold and $19.95 for STW.

Compared to TW, Stronghold is a pathetic excuse for a tactical game. I'm surprised you could even put it in the same class its so bad. I kid you not, I haven't put it into my computer since I bought it over 3 years ago. Really it was just Lemmings on crack with no tactical elements--just puzzle solving and fast clicking.

I've been playing nothing but TW and online poker since I purchased STW. In fact, I haven't purchased a single non-CA game since then. Now that is brand loyalty for you.

and what do we get in return? we get another buggy release and the hoary old justification (direct or indirect) that we are "less than 1%" so we might as well just accept what we are given and be happy about it.

You name plenty of successful MP games yourself--more than I can come up with--more than I knew existed. I just know the market for them exists because everyone I know prefers to play MP, and the vast majority of forum goers I bump into prefer MP. I had no idea there really was such a precedent out there for MP oriented profit. In any case, I think it is safe to say that from a player's perspective those games don't hold a CANDLE to Total War's potential.

"Tell me why we should take any risks without a great deal of care and attention and investigation *and some numbers to back it up*."

Because we are the players and we say so. That's about all we have that we can tell you. If you would share some of your figures or even your opinion maybe we would have something to work off--but you are asking us to persuade you without even knowing where you stand.

Take a look at your numbers from STW and MTW. I'll bet you see a pattern. Immediately after the initial release you see some really good MP numbers online (or trying to logon but getting crashed). Maybe even up to about 1.5% or 2%. Then after a few months the numbers dwindle back down to 1% (dissatisfaction). After the patch you get another small bump, and then dwindle again down to probably about .5% or .75% before the next release.

Here's another guess. Your online numbers went up a little bit after each major release, but not in between (expansions). No matter what happens, there is always a base of maybe .5% that is always around.

That .5% is us, your hardcore loyal MP players. The expansions dont effect MP play that much because they don't bring in any new players and by that time the folks who are fed-up have left and its just us hardcore folks left. Maybe a few come back to try the expansion, but not many.

My guess is that you lose about 1% of MP players PER full-release to frustration and alienation at the numerous MP bugs and poor support (EA was the worst! I still have nightmares about loggin on to the Shoggy server), and that those players never return. Look at the active registered members here at the .org compared to the inactive members. Lots of people have gone the way of the do-do over the years.

One thing is for sure--the unpolished, unfinished, buggy MP aspect of TW full releases drives people away. After the patch your numbers stabilize.

If your "care and attention and investigation and numbers" show that MP is a waste of time, then just cut it already. If not, then take the damn risk and see what happens. Rather than allocating 1% of your budget to MP, try allocating 3% and see what happens. It's not going to bankrupt CA but it will pay off, trust us. Thats all we can say. We are done here in the trenches every day. We see the MP afficianados leave in droves after ever full release. Its been like that after EVERY release for YEARS at a time-- and yet your numbers hover around 1%? Thats because you get new hard-core MP players who are willing to accept the bugs to play this wonderful game of TW--but you can never replace the paying customers that have given up, you can never replace the players who try MP but get errors and quit to play another game.

The vast marketing bonanza that is MP word of mouth has never been tapped into by the Total War series. MP word of mouth has worked AGAINST you. And it always will until you allocate more resources to fixing the problems BEFORE you go to press. No amount of thought and consideration is going to change that fundamental problem-- if you sell me a crappy tasting burger the first time I come to your restaurant, I wont come again. If your response to my complaint is that most of your customers buy your steaks and arent interested in your burgers, so you really don't mind that your burgers suck, then you can also expect I wont return to your establishment to buy a burger.

Then when your burger sales are flat you say, ahh well, nobody wants burgers?

This has got to be the circular logic of the century--can't you guys see that?

[AMP]

if you have any common sense you can tell if your gonna fail or do great with mp.

ever play civ online and spartan? i did and you can easly see why there aren't many playing it online... look at the graphics, lobby, and support for the games. now take a look at warcraft3.. hmm i wonder why that has so many players online.. zzz

i'd play a mp campaign. you don't need a full out campaign, just atleast 4 players max to start. they have the graphics and nice battles to keep me playing a campaign for yrs, just like i've been playing the battles online for 4yrs. like the others say.. reason why it's so small is not much has changed.

how many players online playing at once would be worth it to focus online.. thousands, 36,000+ like warcraft3, or 100,000? to be honest i think if rtw had stable mp campaign and a nice lobby with very few bugs we would reach 5,000+ maybe, that isn't enough? were up to 350 or more at times with how messy it is now, so i'm sure they could make it into the thousands.

it maybe a good thing others have failed to make a good mp campaign online. they can be the 1st to do it with the nice 3d battles. i mean you'll have the battles on top of mp campaign to play...

anyway that's my view on it